Doug Baldwin, Vontaze Burfict fined for gestures

By Nick Shook
NFL.com
Read full post on NFL.com

All five fingers are important to each hand, especially for those who earn a living catching and defending passes.

The longest of those fingers left a couple of players a little lighter in the pockets this week.

Seattle’s Doug Baldwin and Cincinnati’s Vontaze Burfict were each fined $12,154 for separate unsportsmanlike conduct penalties, a league spokesman told NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport. Rapoport connected the fines to the public extensions of their middle fingers.

Baldwin’s was to voice displeasure with offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell’s play call, which ended in a touchdown reception on the part of quarterback Russell Wilson.

We’re in the f—ing red zone, and you want me to throw the ball?” Baldwin said afterward with a laugh, via ESPN’s Sheil Kapadia. “Throw me the ball.”

It was instead Baldwin who was throwing the ball to Wilson, but it was all in good fun, because the Seahawks scored and came away with the win. Burfict’s wasn’t as pleasant.

The controversial Bengals linebacker could be seen extending not one, but both of his middle fingers in the direction of those in the stands during the Bengals‘ home loss to the Bills.

Win or lose, the end result is the same for both — a hefty fine from the league.

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