Dude, it's the first time he's done something like this. It was the heat of the moment, dudes lose their heads sometime. See: AJ Green
You're right. "I was pissed off at someone else" is a completely and totally okay reason for someone to permanently injure another guy's brain. And he's a nice guy. You can't arrest nice guys! That would be un-nice! Never mind that, were this any other context, he would be in jail right now.
Way to take my words completely out of context. Nowhere did I say that he shouldn't be punished, that he was a nice guy, or that it was okay for Gronk to injure another guy's brain.
What I DID say was that those reasons are why extha was going too far in wishing for Gronk's essential death. While I still think it would be distasteful, I would at least see that there'd be more of a case for, say...James Harrison, who his whole career has been fined tons and ****ing tons of money for dangerous hits to people, and then threatened to retire when he couldn't hit people anymore. Or say...greg hardy, who is a complete scumbag in ways we all know about. Or say...ndamukong suh, who has repeatedly taken cheap dangerous shots at his opponents while they're down (in much the same fashion gronk did yesterday, yes, but the key word here is "repeatedly"). And even then, the only one I would ACTUALLY make a case for is greg hardy because the other 2 examples, those guys are just poor sports. I don't know what their personal life is like. Greg Hardy is an actual scum human being, not just athlete.
Gronk got punished, which I agree with. What Gronk did wasn't okay. We agree on this. What I was trying to do was bring attention to extha overreacting to this because, personally, I believe prior history should have an effect on how we see a person. If this had been any of those other people listed above, I'd be down for a longer punishment. Not maybe killing them still, but the point remains that more punishment goes to those more deserving of it. Not to mention that Gronk seemed to show genuine remorse for it. No I'm NOT saying that that should offset any need for a punishment, you can apologize for doing bad things in life and still deserve punishment, so I am still happy he got suspended. He earned it. But why are you trying to take half of my post and turn it into meaning something else?
I apologize. This is a somewhat emotional topic for me, and I agree that calling for someone's death is definitely unwarranted.
But basically, the idea that something like this can be excused to any extent because of past history is simply unacceptable to me. And a meaningless one-game suspension (because, let's admit it, this is not going to stop the Patriots from rofflestomping the Fins) is a slap on the wrist. If the NFL doesn't want to be a joke, seriously and deliberately injuring someone cannot be tolerated.
Apology accepted. I'm not really sure what constitutes a fair suspension anymore tbh, like you do make a good point that the one game against the dolphins means far less than it would, say, the week after, which I believe is against pittsburgh? But then you get into all sorts of grey area where "x action = y games unless those games are against bad teams then it = z games", and with the NFL already flubbing stuff like Ray Rice and Greg Hardy, I don't trust them 1 second in that kind of situation. I would definitely like to see them crack down harder on that kind of stuff across the board though. ---