NFL fines Tyreek Hill $10K for flashing peace sign at defense during TD again

For the second year in a row, the NFL has decided that Tyreek Hill flashing a peace sign during a touchdown is an act that needs to be punished.

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The Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver has been fined $10,527 for throwing up the sign as he ran away from the Denver Broncos defense during last week’s “Thursday Night Football” game, according to NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero.

The offending act occurred on a 57-yard touchdown catch from Matt Moore in which Hill used his trademark speed to simply run past the Broncos defense.

We went through this when Green Bay Packers running back Aaron Jones was fined the same amount for waving goodbye to the Dallas Cowboys defense and when Hill was fined $10,026 for the exact same thing last year, but it bears repeating. This is, at best, an extremely silly reaction from a league that ostensibly wants its players to be known personalities in the sports world and, at worst, a nefarious way for the league to essentially steal money from its players in plain sight for harmless acts.

Even the Broncos player Hill flashed the peace sign toward — y’know, the supposed victim in this — was joking about the fine on Twitter.

You could say Hill was supposed to have learned his lesson from last year’s punishment that he needs to refrain from celebrating touchdowns, but you get mixed messages when the NFL itself was celebrating a touchdown celebration on Twitter just a few days earlier.

The line between those two plays is obvious — the NFL permits post-touchdown celebrations, but not during the play — but isn’t that a ridiculously arbitrary line to draw when you think about it? That one play is a heinous act to be punished and the other is tweeted out to millions of followers, with the only distinction being if Hill waited a few seconds?

Fortunately for Hill, he still has that $35 million in guaranteed extension money to help pay the fine, but such a punishment could very well be a precedent for a player with less money in the future.

Anyway, we’re sure the NFL will refrain from ever showing the end of Hill’s offending touchdown in highlight reels going forward.

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