Fine Jalen Carter, But Suspend Dak Prescott for Being the Smuggest Man in America

Let's all take a deep breath and state the obvious: Jalen Carter spitting on Dak Prescott is one of the dumbest, most disgusting things you can do on a football field. It’s a level of disrespect usually reserved for pigeons and statues. He should be fined, suspended, and forced to personally re-seed the field with a tiny shovel. Everyone from your grandma to the Pope agrees on this. It was a classless, bush-league move.

Okay. Now that we’ve gotten the sane, rational, mainstream media-approved take out of the way, can we please talk about the real crime that took place on that field tonight?

I’m not talking about the spit. That can be wiped off with a Gatorade towel.

I’m talking about… The Grin.

We all saw it. After the human sprinkler incident, the camera cut to Dak. And there it was. A slow-building, self-satisfied, diabolically smug grin that spread across his face. It was the smirk of a Bond villain who just revealed his master plan. It was the grin of a guy who just won a completely unfair argument. It was a look so infuriating, so utterly punchable, that it made Carter's spit-take look like a minor social faux pas.

Jalen Carter’s actions were born of hot-headed, idiotic passion. Dak Prescott’s grin was something far more sinister. It was a cold, calculated act of psychological warfare. You can’t convince me he wasn’t baiting Carter the entire time. That grin wasn’t a reaction; it was the final move in a game of chess only Dak was playing. It was a look that said, “I own you. I have broken you. And now I will stand here and bask in your failure while the world watches.”

Let's be honest, which is worse?

An impulsive act of stupidity that’s over in a second? Or a soul-crushing, ego-destroying smirk that will be replayed on blooper reels for the next 20 years? You can wash spit off your helmet. You can’t wash the memory of that insufferable grin out of your brain. It’s an emotional scar that the entire city of Philadelphia will now have to carry for a generation.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell loves to talk about "protecting the shield" and the "integrity of the game." Well, what’s a bigger threat to the integrity of the game? A little bit of saliva, or a level of facial arrogance so powerful it threatens to destabilize an entire conference? If we’re going to start policing emotions, we can’t stop at the obvious stuff. We have to go after the real villains.

So here’s my proposal. Fine Jalen Carter his game check. Suspend him for a game, maybe two. Whatever. The league has to do something.

But if they want to send a real message, they have to come down on Prescott, too. Suspend him one game for "Conduct Detrimental to the League's Humility." Fine him $50,000 for "Excessive Smugness in the Face of an Opponent's Meltdown."

Am I crazy? Or am I the only one brave enough to say what we were all thinking? Jalen Carter may have committed the foul, but Dak Prescott’s smug grin is the image that will haunt our nightmares. You simply cannot let a crime against sportsmanship like that go unpunished.