Texans LB punched Bears RB square in the facemask and got away with it

Sunday Night Football between the Houston Texans and Chicago Bears got testy after Caleb Williams took a hard knock on the sideline.

Williams was running out of bounds when he got popped by Azeez Al-Shaair. The rookie and the Texans defender both went crashing into a crowd of Bears players on the sideline. Replays showed it was a legal hit but the players didn't have that view. They jumped to the defense of their quarterback.

Al-Shaair, surrounded by Bears after making the tackle, jumped to his feet and for some reason took a closed fist shot at Chicago running back Roschon Johnson's face. Well, to be more accurate, it was his facemask.

Here's the full sequence including the hit and the scuffle that followed.

Azeez Al-Shaair got away with throwing a punch, for now

Two things in sports involving hands confound me. The first is MLB pitchers punching hard surfaces and breaking their hands, i.e. their livelihood. The second is football players punching someone in the helmet. Who do they think is going to win that battle, their hand or the hard plastic shell designed to protect a person's head?

Aside from the inherent stupidity, it's a costly thing to try on the football field.

Al-Shaair got lucky. No referee saw him throw that punch so he avoided an ejection and a penalty that would have harmed his team. Instead, he just hurt his wallet. The NFL is certain to levy a hefty fine for that punch.

Instances like this show the blindspots of video review though. Al-Shaair shouldn't have gotten lucky there. The refs or the replay center in New York should be able to look at something like that and get it right. The same goes for earlier in the game when Nico Collins was penalized for shoving a Bears defender who started the whole thing by poking him in the nose.