Thanks to a hit from Browns safety Tashaun Gipson, the Bills will be without their starting quarterback for at least the next few weeks.
Gipson’s lunging tackle along the sideline made contact with EJ Manuel‘s right knee, knocking the rookie from the game and resulting in a sprained lateral collateral ligament.
The tackle was legal — no flags were thrown on the play — but the way in which Gipson celebrated the hit while Manuel was clearly injured ticked off some in the Buffalo locker room.
“The hit was fine, what ticked me off was the way they acted afterwards,” Bills center and co-captain Eric Wood told reporters Friday. ”I hope our defense never acts like that when they injure an opposing quarterback. You’ve got to show some class in that situation. There’s a few guys over there that obviously didn’t.
“You’ve got [Browns safety] T.J. Ward yelling at Kiko [Alonso], a former college teammate, ‘I told you to warn him that we were going to get him.’ That’s classless. Every team has probably got them. I’m not going to say that nobody on our team has ever done that, but it ticks you off when someone on the other team does it for sure.”
Ward called Wood’s accusations “completely innacurate,” saying that an injury is never a reason for celebration. Gipson admitted that his actions after the play may have been a bit out of line (“Maybe my gesture at the end probably didn’t suit it well,” he said Friday), but he made no apologies for the hit itself.
“It’s the game of football. Things like that happen. I definitely don’t intentionally try to hurt anybody. I wouldn’t dare do that. I’m not that kind of player,” Gipson said, according to ESPN.com. “Our QB took a shot. Their QB took a shot. Not to say that we were trying to go one for one, but it’s the game of football. He’s running around on the sidelines. He could have gotten out of bounds. He didn’t. So it’s my job to bring the ballcarrier down.”
The Browns also lost their quarterback in the contest, which Cleveland won 37-24. Brian Hoyer suffered a torn ACL just four minutes into the first quarter, and he will now miss the remainder of the season.
Photo via Twitter/@buffalobills
