After Cowboys defensive lineman Neville Gallimore was ejected from Sunday’s game for kicking Giants guard Justin Pugh, Pugh said he felt badly for Gallimore that his paycheck was going to get docked.
As it turns out, Gallimore’s paycheck wasn’t docked all that much, relative to how harsh the NFL often is with player fines.
The league confirmed today that it fined Gallimore $9,754 for the kick that got him kicked out of the game.
That’s a surprisingly light punishment for such a blatantly illegal act. The NFL routinely fines players many multiples of that for bang-bang plays in the heat of the action in which a player clearly wasn’t intending to hurt anyone. In Gallimore’s case, he chose to kick an opponent after a play was over. The NFL merely slapped him on the wrist for it.