Should the Rams' Bobby Wagner have hit the protester at Levi’s Stadium? | You Pod to Win the Game
Yahoo Sports’ Charles Robinson and Charles Mcdonald discuss the big hit that took place on the field, but not during the game at Levi’s Stadium last Monday night. The fan who ran across the playing surface with a pink smoke bomb filed a police report claiming assault at the hands of Rams linebacker Bobby Wagner. Was Wagner out of line? Or did the fan make that a possible consequence by running onto an NFL playing field during a game? Hear the full conversation on the You Pod to Win the Game podcast. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
[AUDIO LOGO]
CHARLES ROBINSON: If there is a lesson that we learned Monday, it is not just don't run on the football field, stay the [BLEEP] away from Bobby Wagner. He will plant you into the ground. Became semi-famous-- he became viral this week for something other than his football acumen. Took out a protester who had the smarts, I guess, to jump onto the field, run around, and get absolutely decked.
The news comes out today that-- and I spoke to the Santa Clara Police department about this. There has now been an assault complaint filed on Tuesday, for the audacity of Bobby Wagner knocking this man down after he entered the field of play with a smoking-- I don't know what that thing was, a smoke bomb, whatever.
This complaint though, I'm curious, I wrote the [? newser ?] on it, so I'm going to try and be as reserved as possible about this. But I got a feeling, people are going to have opinions about whether or not this was assault.
CHARLES MCDONALD: Assault is interesting. Because I feel like, football is one of the-- one of the few jobs that you can have in this world, where you can like assault someone and not get in trouble with it. So like, the idea that, you think you could just run on a football field. And like, not risk getting hit by someone who hits people for a living. You're interrupting their area of work at the same time--
CHARLES ROBINSON: Right.
CHARLES MCDONALD: --is a-- it's a little crazy to think that you could kind of get away with that, and not have that be like in the realm of possibilities of things that can happen to you when you run on to a field. And also, what a bad choice of what teams to run against. If you're going to do this, I would pick a team like the Seahawks and the Lions. Because maybe, I can get away from their defenders. Right. Yeah.
Why would I sit here and try to run away from Nick Bosa, Aaron Donald, Bobby Wagner, Arik Armstead, like, all these guys who are top of the class NFL defensive players. It seemed like a weird choice to kind of pick one.
But my initial reaction was, if you run on a field, that's something that might happen to you. But I think, in our little text group before we started the show, you brought up an interesting point of-- like, should Bobby Wagner be doing something like that, I guess, is a question. And that, I don't really know.
CHARLES ROBINSON: First and foremost, if he had-- if he had chosen the Lions and Seahawks, he'd probably still be running around on the field right now. He still would be-- he would have been unencumbered for pretty much as long as he wanted to be out there. He probably would have gotten tired, and then just left the field rather than being wiped out.
I think what's interesting about this is, there's really two sides to the argument. And I think they're both decent arguments. On one hand, you get the-- you get what you asked for. You're entering the field to play. It's professional football. If you're evading security for long enough, a football player is going to step forward and take your ass out.
But then there's the other side of the coin, which is interesting. And it is-- in any other venue in life, that's assault. Like, you get-- you know, somebody runs by, you wipe them out. That is simple assault. And the question though is, whether or not Bobby Wagner-- the thing that was smoking object in the guy's hand.
As Wagner said, and I'm paraphrasing here, I don't know what that is. I have no-- if that's something that could hurt us. You have no clue. So there's an element of self defense here. But Levi's Stadium does have security. There is a reason why those people have jobs. They're the ones who are supposed to take care of this.
And I think this is a-- I think it's a valid point. If you're a football player, what if you hit this guy, right? You're padded up. You've got a helmet on. All these different things. We just talked about concussions. All this different stuff, right? And that's what-- guys who all have helmets on hitting each other.
What if you take this guy out and something happens that you don't anticipate? What if there's a severe concussion? What if there's a skull fracture? What if the guy falls wrong and breaks his neck? And all of a sudden, we're talking about potentially a life altering moment for a football player who really didn't need that, up in his life, at that point. So I can see people saying, is it the smartest thing? All right, like, we get it. We understand it. Clearly, a lot of people laughed at it and were entertained by it.
But if I'm Bobby Wagner's agent, I'm probably saying, hey, you know what man, I get it. Like, I understand it. But just let that slide. Like, don't put yourself into a situation, where if by some sliver of a chance something goes wrong, and this guy-- changes this guy's life, or hurts him in a way where you could have severe ramifications. Eh, let's just go ahead and let security deal with it.
