After the loss against the Seahawks in week 13, the Jets have slipped to 12th place in their conference and 3rd in the AFC East. They are at risk of elimination from the playoffs. New York Jets CB DJ Reed is fed up with the losses. He vented his anger over the referees. Well, the NFL doesn’t take it lightly.

After losing the game, Reed tweeted, “You F—— s—, yall should be ashamed of yall selves.!” That’s a pretty vicious attack. Now, that’s something that might attract a fine from the league that works very hard to safeguard its reputation. A few similar instances indicate so.

Browns DE Myles Garrett was much more toned down last year when he commented on the referees, “The officiating was a travesty today.” But the NFL took offense to that and fined him $25,000. That’s the extent to which the league goes whenever such an attack is carried on its game officials. But there have been exceptions too.

Aaron Rodgers, DJ Reeds’s teammate, also had a similar reaction after their week 6 loss to the Bills. He called the decisions “a little ridiculous” before adding, “Some of them seemed really bad, including the roughing the passer on me. That’s not roughing the passer.” Everyone was assuming that he would get fined. But it didn’t happen.

For now, we can only wait for the league to come out with the fines for its week 13 games. The officials would be waiting to review it.

The NFL could fine DJ Reed in thousands

Any act on and off the field that puts other players, officials, or other associated people in danger can be fined. But it also includes any act that might be detrimental to the league. So, raising questions or using such words as DJ Reed used in his tweet might get the priciest fines.

There is a separate section in which such offenses are reviewed. Under the ‘Offense Against Game Official,’ any ‘Physical contact With Official‘ has a fine of $39,501, for the first time, which jumps to $79,004 if it gets repeated. But he didn’t touch any referee. So, he could get fined under the ‘Verbal or other Non-Physical Offense Against Official‘ with a first-time fine of $31,599. That amounts to $63,204 for a second-time violation.

Fans understand that the emotions are running high. And the Jets have a 3-9 win-loss record which no one expected when the season started. But the best way to silence the critics is by focusing on their performance. Finding faults with others or using such language wouldn’t help them in any way.