Keanu Neal insists hit on Jordan Matthews was clean

I’ve been incredibly impressed with Keanu Neal thus far. He’s shown terrific maturity, and more importantly, tremendous skill, and he’s already looking like one of the league’s better safeties. Even players of that caliber make mistakes, though, and Neal made one that surprisingly was not flagged against the Eagles.

Neal could face a fine for that from the league office, and Jordan Matthews came up looking a little dazed and with a bloody lip. It wasn’t an in-character hit for Neal, who is vicious but certainly not a headhunter, and I chalked it up to an accident, albeit one that I didn’t feel great about.

Neal wants to confirm that viewpoint, and he took directly to Twitter to do so.

I wanted to pass this along to point out how forthright Neal seems to be, and to illustrate that while he may get a fine and this may get some airplay, this is not a major issue. The Falcons have had many more problems with pass interference and pre-snap penalties on offense than dirty play, and while I doubt Neal’s going to change his enthusiastic launching style of tackling, I also doubt we’ll see him making this kind of contact again the rest of the way.