I said it was technically ‘crossing the line’ and in another post, even if you are going to argue he engaged and Avril, couldn’t pull back, it was a pre-season game and Avril was clearly trying to hit hard.
And I even made a mistake in my original post. Avril wasn’t even engaged with Smith, he went around the outside of Doug Free and looped all the way around, meaning ran totally outside and came from behind and blind-sided Romo after he took off, meaning he basically was out of the play but kept coming.
Not sure what ‘playing hard’ has to do in the context of the rules that you can’t hit a sliding QB in the rules today.
Either case, none of that changes the fact the injury was textbook football trauma and would happen to anyone, meaning it was biomechanical and the standard healing time was 6 weeks without surgery.
This idea Romo was just chilling is a myth. He was sliding forward and Avril hit him and bent him forward.