Cleveland Browns pass-rusher Jared Verse called out the Pittsburgh Steelers for dirty play after defeating the visiting AFC North Division rivals at Huntington Bank Field in Week 4, and Pittsburgh put a target on his back as a result.
Steelers starting offensive guard Mason McCormick took it upon himself to enact the team’s revenge against Verse, picking him up and slamming him to the ground as Verse tried to block an extra-point try during the first quarter.
The Underdog NFL X account shared video of the play on X.
“To do something like that — I can’t have respect for anything like that.”
“To do something like that, I can’t have respect for anything like that,” Verse said.
The Browns defensive end expounded upon his position during a postgame interview.
“That’s just the way that they are, him specifically. That’s the way he plays and that was just lack of awareness on my part,” Verse said per Camryn Justice of WEWS Cleveland. “I should have had a better grasp of the type of player I was going up against. That’s just on me.”
While the Steelers disagreed that McCormick did anything unsportsmanlike or untoward, the referees flagged him for unnecessary roughness, which is likely to result in a financial penalty of some kind from the NFL next week.
Dirty Play Against Jared Verse Could Result in 5-Figure Fine
The NFL Office of Gameday Accountability issues fines for on-field misconduct every week.
The league will officially and publicly announce any and all of those penalties for Week 8 on Saturday, November 7, one day before the main slate of Week 9 games. The penalized players, however, typically find out from the NFL via a midweek notification.
Officials at the league office have some subjective discretion to define the category of unnecessary roughness under which a specific play falls. In Verse’s case, a possible categorization will be “striking/kicking/tripping/kneeing,” the first offense for which typically constitutes a fine of $12,537.
The full list of penalty classifications and subsequent fines can be found here.
Mason McCormick Says He Did Not Know the Player He Body-Slammed Was Jared Verse
McCormick offered his two cents on the play during a postgame interview.
“I really had no idea who it was. Just felt somebody jump,” McCormick said. “I was told to get the jumpers hands down.”
McCormick is a third-year NFL veteran who has played in all 42 regular-season games since joining the league in 2024 as a fourth-round pick out of South Dakota State. He has started 39 of those contests.
Pittsburgh and Cleveland have now split the season series. However, the Steelers (6-2) have a one-game lead over the Browns (5-3), affording Pittsburgh the outright lead in the AFC North Division heading into Week 9.
Cheap Shot on Browns’ Jared Verse Likely to Result in Steelers’ Punishment