Source: League not expected to suspend Jon Bostic for hit on Andy Dalton

By now almost everyone has seen the dirty hit from linebacker Jon Bostic on Cowboys quarterback Andy Dalton. As Dalton escaped the pocket and ran the ball, he went into the typical quarterback slide, giving himself up on the play. Washington Football Team linebacker Jon Bostic, instead of just stopping or changing trajectory when Dalton went into his slide, lowered his helmet and launched into Dalton, connecting with his head and knocking Dalton out of the game.

It was the kind of hit you used to see in football but that has been outlawed for a decade or two now. You still occasionally see someone hit a quarterback in is slide, but this particular hit was egregious. Bostic was penalized and thrown out of the game. It was immediately speculated that he would be suspended. It doesn’t look like that will happen.

According to Adam Schefter, sources are telling him that the league is not going to suspend Bostic. That’s unfortunate as it’s likely Dalton will miss time with the concussion, but Bostic won’t miss any time. The good news for Dalton is that he was feeling much better than the “out of of it” figure who needed two people on each side to even exit the field.

Even the Washington coaching staff knew this was no normal hit.

“I told him, Jon, you’re a veteran guy, you should know better,” Rivera told PFT by phone after Sunday’s 25-3 win. “I didn’t see it and I was really kind of asking everyone what happened. They said, ‘He hit him, Coach.’ And then when he got ejected, that really surprised me.”

Rivera sought out Dallas coach Mike McCarthy after the game ended.

“I went up to him and apologized to him for it,” Rivera said of McCarthy. “I wanted him to know that we don’t play that way, and it’s unfortunate that it happened.”

Although it’s possible that Dalton could play this week, it is more likely that Ben DiNucci will see his first start in the NFL. The Cowboys season was already teetering on the brink and yesterday’s action might have just pushed it over the edge.

Much has been made of the Cowboys team not reacting at all to the hit. No Cowboys player went after Bostic, instead they passively stood around. This made it look even more like this is a defeated team that has packed it in. Even coach Mike McCarthy was surprised by the fact the Cowboys didn’t react at all.

“We speak all the time about playing for one another, protecting one another,” McCarthy said. “It definitely was not the response you would expect.”

There’s just something fundamentally wrong with this year’s Cowboys football team.