Bills players not happy at Browns WR Jarvis Landry for 'dirty' block

We’ve spent a good amount of time this month, thanks to the new helmet rule, arguing if certain hits are dangerous or just part of football.

The same can be said for a block Cleveland Browns receiver Jarvis Landry had on Buffalo Bills rookie cornerback Taron Johnson.

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Landry came down to block an unsuspecting Johnson on a touchdown run by Carlos Hyde. Landry blasted Johnson, allowing Hyde to bounce outside for a score. Some will celebrate that as a hard-nosed play. The Bills thought it was dirty.

Was Jarvis Landry’s hit dirty?

Here’s the hit, as shown by The Checkdown, a social media site for one of NFL.com’s pages. Notice that the tweet highlighted the “MONSTER” block by Landry:

The Bills weren’t happy. They remember Landry being penalized for an illegal crackback block on then-Bills safety Aaron Williams when Landry was with the Miami Dolphins. Landry was fined for that hit.

“Landry, he’s a good receiver, physical guy, but some of those plays that he has — Aaron Williams, Taron, I’m pretty sure he has other ones — I just think they’re dirty,” Bills linebacker Lorenzo Alexander according to Mike Rodak of ESPN. “Coming from the outside of the box in, the league needs to do a better job of calling penalties on those types of plays. Obviously, defenders get called all the time on stuff that is probably less egregious than that. If we’re going to protect our football players, we need to protect everybody, not just offensive guys.

“It was dirty at the end of the day, and that’s how I feel about it.”

Bills safety on Landry’s block: “That’s B.S.”

Bills safety Micah Hyde wasn’t happy with Landry either.

“That’s ridiculous. Because If a defensive player did that to a offensive player, he’s getting ejected,” Hyde said, via Dan Fetes of WROC. “I don’t care if he lowered his shoulder or not, he’s coming all the way from No. 1, past the numbers, flying down into the hashes and just cleaning up somebody.

“To me, that’s B.S. You can’t do that. All he had to do was get in position, screen him off. He doesn’t have to go in and try to kill anybody.”

While most of the debate over hits this preseason have come over the new rule against a player leading with his helmet, Landry’s block gives us an entirely different hit to argue about.

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Frank Schwab is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at shutdown.corner@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
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