Following Sunday's game between the Lions and Falcons, a couple of Atlanta players accused Ndamukong Suh and Cliff Avril of taunting Matt Ryan after he was injured in the third quarter. Specifically, Falcons center Todd McClure accused Suh of saying, among other things, "Get the cart." Falcons wide receiver Roddy White also accused Suh of taunting Ryan, and he alleged Avril taunted Ryan as well.
"I lost a whole lot of respect for 90 [Suh] today, and also 92 [Cliff Avril], the [bleep] they were doing when Matt got hurt. That was unacceptable. … Like 92 was kicking [Ryan’s] feet, saying, ‘Get him off the field.’ We don’t do stuff like that. We don’t rally over guys when they get hurt. It was just inappropriate behavior. I mean, ‘Get the cart’? Are you serious? Come on. When you compete, you never want to see a guy get hurt."
Avril chimed in on the allegations on Twitter and said this:
Come on I'm not in the business of hurting not one guy on the field... I would never taunt anyone on an injury... But if we want to talk about dirty players look at the film and see who prides themselves on being durty...
According to Dave Birkett, Ryan said after the game that he didn't hear any taunting. What's more, taking a look at video of the play (see after the jump) reveals that Avril and Suh were not near Ryan after he went down. It's obviously possible they could have been saying stuff to other Falcons players, but the allegation that Avril was kicking Ryan's feet seems false based on the video of the play.
Something could have happened out of the camera's view, and I don't know why somebody would make something like that up, but I didn't see Avril do anything wrong. We obviously can't tell what was said, but at the very least I didn't see Avril kicking Ryan's feet, which is a much worse accusation than simply talking trash.