Seahawks wide receiver Golden Tate said Monday that he was praying he didn't get fined by the NFL for the blindside hit he delivered Sunday on Cowboys linebacker Sean Lee.
Tate posted the following statement on his official Twitter page Sunday evening:
"I hope Sean Lee is ok. I never have intentions on injuring another player. It's football which means Its physical, dirty hit would be if I went for his head or neck area."
Well, the NFL saw things differently, fining Tate $21,000 on Wednesday.
"I don't think I did anything wrong, but only time will tell," Tate said Monday on Sports Radio KJR in Seattle. "We'll see what the NFL office says, and we'll go from there."
Tate also said during the Monday interview that he aimed lower to avoid a helmet-to-helmet collision because he "had no interest in hurting" Lee.
But Tate wasn't too remorseful when he heard that Lee said the Seattle receiver wouldn't be celebrating the way he did if the two players met up one-on-one.
"He has his own opinion of what he thinks," Tate said Monday. "I'd be upset if I was on that highlight, being crushed. But I'm a lover not a fighter, so if it came to one-on-one, we'll deal with that whenever that time comes.
"Like I said, I never have any intentions on hurting another player. The way I see it, this is a big fraternity. I was just playing hard and got caught up in the moment. At that point, I thought the game could go either way. It was a momentum changer. It sprung us, and that was my only intention, was putting this offense in better position to score and win the game. And that was an opportunity that I feel like, at the end of the day, any defensive player would be licking their chops to get a hit on a quarterback. So I felt like maybe this is a legal block I was going to get on a defensive player versus them always trying to knock us out.
"So, I wasn't trying to be vicious at all. But it is what it is."
Follow Jon Machota on Twitter: @jonmachota
