Will Hernandez had never been ejected in an NFL game. He had never even been fined before, so Wednesday, he still wasn’t sure exactly how it would all play out on his paycheck after the starting right guard was thrown out of the win in Carolina for making contact with an official.
“There is a first time for everything,” Hernandez said about the fourth-quarter play, which came after he rushed to the defense of teammate James Conner. Conner had been thrown to the ground by Panthers linebacker Frankie Luvu after the play was blown dead.
But Hernandez doesn’t regret what happened, because a teammate needed defending.
“I went out there to play football,” Hernandez said. “Things happen sometimes in the game which is part of it. This time it happened to one of our guys. That’s how I react. I take it personal. That’s my boy. That’s my teammate. I’m not just going to sit there and watch it happen.”
Hernandez said he didn’t say anything to the official after his ejection. “I just went inside, went back in the locker room like a good boy, followed the rules and that’s about it,” he said, although Hernandez did get a talk from offensive line coach Sean Kugler as he went off.
Coach Kliff Kingsbury noted that starting left guard Justin Pugh had already left the game with an injury so “we’ve got to be smarter than that.”
“You do appreciate him having his teammates back and they all know that, but we can’t put our team in that type of position,” Kingsbury added.
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