"I thought it was a joke" -- Why Jerry Jeudy's fine rankles Broncos teammates like Justin Simmons

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Pretend to draw an arrow and fire it from an imaginary bow — get fined five figures. Make the same gesture without releasing the arrow — no fine.

Wide receiver Jerry Jeudy could only shake his head at the events that surrounded of his first two games back from a high-ankle sprain. In his first contest back — the Broncos’ 17-10 win Oct. 31 against Washington — he celebrated a catch by pretending to fire with a bow and arrow.

Few could fault him for being exuberant after missing six games. But the NFL was among those few, saying the celebration ran afoul of its rules against targeting.

That led to a $12,875 fine.

“I was surprised by that,” Jeudy said.

“I thought it was a joke, honestly,” added safety Justin Simmons.

What Jeudy, Simmons and the rest of the Broncos learned was this: to simulate a release of the arrow ran afoul of the league’s taunting rules. But if you make the same hand motions without the release? You’re good.

So, when he had the opportunity to celebrate against Dallas last Sunday, he did the same thing without the release.

This is the weird, arbitrary world of defining taunting in 2021.

“Description: bow and arrow. That’s taunting. It’s not like he directed that at anyone, like, he’s just having fun. He made a big play,” Simmons said Wednesday.

And 53 players might have 53 different manners in which to celebrate such a play.

“That’s what I love about football. That’s what I love about the locker rooms: all different walks of life coming together nd having the main objective of trying to win a football game,” Simmons said.

Not everyone is Barry Sanders, who even after touchdowns would not celebrate with more than a casual flip of the football to the nearest official.

“Some guys do (the) bow and arrow,” Simmons said. “Some guys do the first-down (signal). Some guys yell at the top of their lungs. Some guys have no celebration, like Kyle Fuller.”

The reference to the stoic Fuller, a man of few public words, elicited chuckles from the media listening to Simmons. But the team captain’s frustration with the NFL is no laughing matter.

The rule itself is not new, but the NFL Competition Committee chose to make this a point of emphasis this year, to prevent disagreements that escalate into full-scale fights. Steelers coach Mike Tomlin, a member of the competition committee, also said that the emphasis was made because of the NFL wanting to set an example for football players at lower levels.

“We’re just trying to clean our game up,” Tomlin, a member of the NFL’s competition committee, said Tuesday. “We embrace the responsibility that comes with being the role models that we are.

“We understand that people who play at a lower level watch us and often mimic the things we do and how we conduct ourselves,” Tomlin said at his press conference in Pittsburgh on Tuesday.

But at the same time, spontaneous emotion are a part of football — as is the case with any sport. It is as unreasonable to create rules that weed passionate reactions out of football as it would be to legislate morality itself.

Former Steelers safety Ryan Clark made that point on ESPN this week, delivering a brief monologue of which Simmons took keen note.

“If there’s going to be certain rules or certain things that are officiated in this, they need to be definitive,” Clark said. “I need to know that I can’t stare at people. I need to know that I can’t flex my muscles. I need to know that what I’ve worked my entire life to do, the thing that I’ve stayed up from 5 in the morning ’til midnight every single night, the thing that I’ve gotten therapy and needles stuck from my neck to my ankles, the reason I’ve been in cold tubs and hot tubs every single morning, and the reason I’ve ran through film 80 million times is so I can make that one play.

“And you mean to tell me on that one play, I’ve gotta calm all that down that went into this because somebody who can’t do what I do, who ain’t never done what I’ve done and don’t know what this feeling is like gets offended by it?”

Simmons concurred.

“You work all week for that one play. To make a big interception, a big sack. Of course, there’s going to be emotion behind it,” he said. “There’s obviously egregious times where you can tell, it’s directly — just like an illegal hit … you can tell when a guy is trying to hurt somebody, as opposed to just trying to make a football hit.

“I think it’s the same thing with the taunting. You can tell when someone’s egregiously taunting the other team, as opposed to just — in pure excitement of, hey, my film study paid off, all week of the cryo, the hot tub, the cold tub, the needling, all that stuff. All that stuff paid off for this big play that I made on Sunday. I think you should be able to show some excitement, but, that’s just my feeling.”

It’s a feeling shared around the league’s locker rooms, filled with players who don’t like the rule, but would settle for at least a bit of clarity and less arbitrary enforcement and definition of taunting.