That should have resulted in a personal foul and an ejection, but the officials missed it and the game went on. Johnson, to his credit, didn’t retaliate, but he wrote on social media after the game that he wanted to.
“It took every bit of my soul not to thrash that boy,” Johnson wrote.
Al-Shaair will certainly be fined and could be suspended for the punch.
This is a lesson that Houston Texans' defender Azeez Al-Shaair quickly learned on Sunday night.
After Al-Shaair leveled Williams with a hard hit in bounds on a long first down next to the Bears' sideline, it felt like the entire offense (the entire team?) came to Williams' defense without thinking while ALSO being very smart about it. (Note: Al-Shaair clearly punched Bears running back Roschon Johnson but wasn't flagged.)
Just remember that Williams hadn't even played two full games at the time of this play. And the Bears are already doing this kind of thing for him.
That speaks volumes:
The Chicago Bears-Houston Texans matchup on Sunday Night Football appeared to get ugly during a tense moment in the third quarter.
Bears quarterback Caleb Williams scampered toward the sideline on a first down and seemed to be giving himself up when Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair rammed into him. Williams took the hard hit and fell out of bounds on the ground near his Bears teammates, who immediately mobbed Al-Shaair.
During the scuffle, Al-Shaair threw a blatant punch at Bears running back Roschon Johnson, who wasn’t even playing in the game. Johnson didn’t retaliate but did raise his hands wondering why the referees didn’t throw a flag.
Cris Collinsworth and Mike Tirico noted on the broadcast that because the referees presumably didn’t see the punch and didn’t throw a flag, the play wasn’t reviewable by New York.
However, replays of the incident show just how obvious the punch was and how lucky Al-Shaair was to not get ejected from the game.
Fortunately for the Texans' defensive captain, referees seemed not to notice his antics on the sideline.
Sunday night's matchup between the Chicago Bears and Houston Texans turned feisty in the third quarter, when Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair got away with punching Bears running back Roschon Johnson on the sideline.
Here's what happened:
Al-Shaair delivered a physical hit on rookie quarterback Caleb Williams along the Bears sideline, which the refs decided not to penalize for unnecessary roughness. The real unnecessary roughness came after, as Al-Shaair got up and found himself surrounded by angry Bears.
Al-Shaair got up and immediately threw a punch at Johnson. Afterward, Darnell Wright came up to Al-Shaair, who answered his approach with a head-butt. Officials apparently missed both of these potential penalties.
If any NFL player throws a punch during the course of a game, they are automatically ejected. So Al-Shaair got lucky. Credit to the Bears sideline for not escalating what was clearly an emotional moment.
Al-Shaair came over to Houston from the rival Tennessee Titans this offseason. The tackling monster recorded a career-high 163 takedowns last year for the Titans, and was voted a team captain in his first season with the Texans.
In a tense moment during the Texans' victory over the Bears, a missed call leaves fans questioning the NFL's officiating standards.
During Sunday Night Football between the Houston Texans and Chicago Bears, tensions escalated after a legal but hard hit on Bears rookie quarterback Caleb Williams. The hit occurred along the Chicago sideline, sparking an emotional response from both teams. In the heat of the moment, Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair retaliated by throwing a punch, which shockingly went unnoticed by the referees.
The incident took place in the third quarter, just after a clean, hard tackle on Caleb Williams. While the Bears sideline took issue with the hit, the real controversy followed moments later when Al-Shaair struck a Bears player on the sideline. Despite the blatant punch, the referees failed to flag the incident or eject Al-Shaair, leaving many fans and analysts stunned.
Under NFL rules, such an offense would typically result in an immediate ejection and a 15-yard penalty, but because the referees missed it, Al-Shaair remained in the game and continued to play a significant role in the second half. He contributed to the Texans' physical defensive performance, which included sacking Williams seven times and hitting him 11 times during their 19-13 victory.
Given the severity of the punch, many are questioning why the NFL's replay center isn't empowered to intervene in situations like this, as seen in the NBA. Had the officials seen the punch on the field, Al-Shaair would have been automatically ejected. Now, fans are left wondering whether the league office will step in after reviewing the footage.
There is speculation that Al-Shaair could face a suspension from the league, especially given that his action would have led to an ejection if caught during the game. This could impact the Texans' next matchup against the undefeated Minnesota Vikings, as Houston aims to keep their winning streak alive.
The incident has reignited debates around NFL officiating and the limitations of the league's current replay system. Many are calling for changes that would allow officials in the replay center to flag uncalled penalties in real-time, preventing incidents like this from slipping through the cracks.
As the league reviews the incident, Al-Shaair's availability for next week's crucial game remains uncertain. Fans and analysts alike will be closely watching for the NFL's response to this missed call.
Special shout out to the Texans and Bears for deciding that one boring half of football was enough.
After a kinda bland first two quarters of Sunday Night Football, Chicago and Houston decided to reward the people on hour 12 of football with a little bit of drama. On the tail end of a Caleb Williams scramble, the rookie quaterback was pretty clearly out of bounds when Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair came in hot and knocked Williams down.
That, of course, did not sit particularly well with every single offensive lineman on the Bears' sideline, all of who magically appeared out of nowhere to surround Al-Shaair and bump him a bunch of times. It was the epitome of a sports fight, in that no one was really doing anything but it sure seemed intense. And then Al-Shaair decided it should be a normal fight and punched Roschon Johnson in the face. What there wasn't, however, were any penalty flags! At all!
Not only did the hit on Williams not draw a flag for being a late hit, but the refs missed a punch that would have otherwise normally gotten a player kicked out. That's what NBC's officiating correspondent Terry McAulay thinks, at least. While explaining what happened on the broadcast, McAulay explained that since no flag was originally thrown on the play, the refs couldn't use replay to reassign a flag. If Al-Shaair faces any sort of discipline, it'll come from the league sometime this week.
So definitely file this away in Things You Love To See. The Bears were on the wrong end of a rough moment for the refs, so just get ready for that conversation this week. But we got our first real football fight of the season, so that's fun. Maybe it's best to just concentrate on that and not the fact that the Texans absolutely got away with maybe the two biggest penalties of the night in a span of 90 seconds.
