Video: Was Simoni Lawrence's hit on Henry Burris fair game?

Hamilton Tiger-Cats' linebacker Simoni Lawrence's hit on Ottawa Redblacks' quarterback Henry Burris during Ottawa's 12-6 win Sunday sparked plenty of discussion, with Burris saying "there's no place for people like that in this game" and Lawrence saying Burris was "acting like a ho." But was the hit actually within the bounds of the rules or not? Here's video of the play, plus analysis of it from TSN's Rod Smith and Paul LaPolice:

From this corner, the temptation is to agree with LaPolice. Lawrence is going low because of the penalties for going high, he doesn't seem to be particularly targeting Burris' knee, and his play may not be specifically outside the rules. It wasn't flagged during the game, and it isn't clearly a penalty on further review. It's easy to see why Burris might think that, though, given that he had a week of questions about his knee injury and his limited participation in practice. Also, perhaps low shots are something the CFL needs to consider more thoroughly; protecting heads is vital, but a lot of the massive numbers of quarterback injuries we've seen this year have been lower-body ones, and many of them have involved knees.

Under the current rules, though, this wouldn't necessarily seem to be illegal. The league will undoubtedly review it, and we'll see if they think it's worthy of a fine or not. Regardless, this certainly raises the stake for the return matchup between these teams Saturday. Burris, Lawrence and their teammates will be even more eager to go out there after this, and it's going to be interesting to watch how they perform.