San Francisco 49ers cornerback Richard Sherman doesn't regret getting ejected from his team's 14-9 loss to the Chicago Bears in Week 16.
The play, of course, involved a late hit from Niners safety Marcell Harris on Bears quarterback Mitchell Trubisky. With a five-point lead and just over five minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, Trubisky scrambled to his left but went into a slide after picking up seven yards. Harris hit Trubisky hard, which didn't sit well with Chicago's bench nearby.
You can check out the play below:
Harris was going to get penalized for the late hit, which would have hindered San Francisco's chances to pull off a win that late in the game. But being pulled into a crowd of Bears players, it appeared only necessary some of Harris' teammates came to his support. One of those being Sherman, of course.
"They took him on their sideline," Sherman said of Harris being surrounded by Chicago players after the play. "Pushing, shoving, grabbing and punching on him. You know, these are my guys. I don't care at the end of the day what the deal is. You're going to do all that, you let him go. And it took too long for them to let them go, so I went in there and grabbed him.
"But they continued to pull, jerk and grab on me. I'm a grown man with kids."
The veteran cornerback also critiqued the NFL rules on protecting quarterbacks, suggesting the ultimate way to protect a signal-caller is to not let him run. Trubisky was running well beyond the line of scrimmage and managed to go into a slide. Whether or not Harris had time to peel off and avoid the hit will be yet another example in the case study of quarterback safety.
Sherman was one of three players ejected for the fracas, the others being Bears wide receivers Joshua Bellamy and Anthony Miller. In the end, the third-down play was replayed due to offsetting penalties.
"I wasn't going out for him," Harris later added when asked about his hit on Trubisky. "I knew what comes with penalties, and I wasn't trying to give my team a big penalty in that moment of the game. Obviously you can see what happened. I felt like I laid up on him."
It was a big moment in the game, however, and Sherman certainly endeared himself to his teammates by jumping in to help Harris.
"Sherman is a baller," tight end George Kittle said afterwards. "I respect what he did."
Kittle admitted he isn't going to pay Sherman's pending fine, though.