Ashley Fox: In a blow to the Eagles, Johnson dodges suspension

The FedEx envelopes usually arrive on Wednesdays. Todd Herremans had one waiting on his chair when he got to his locker last week. Asante Samuel had one, too.

Inside the envelopes are the dreaded letters from the National Football League notifying a player that he has been fined for an infraction - like a helmet-to-helmet hit, an illegal block, a hit on a defenseless receiver. And this season, they are arriving at team complexes throughout the league with alarming regularity.

Commissioner Roger Goodell is committed to protecting the NFL shield, even if this pivot from off-the-field player conduct to policing illegal hits is making him increasingly unpopular with the players, many of who think he is overstepping his bounds and crippling the game.

Houston Texans receiver Andre Johnson got a letter on Monday. It was a well-deserved doozy but failed to include a punishment many expected - a one-game suspension. Goodell fined Johnson and Tennessee Titans cornerback Cortland Finnegan $25,000 each for their fight on Sunday, but Goodell did not take it a step further, which begged the question: What on-field transgression does warrant a suspension these days?

If ripping a player's helmet off and punching him in the head, even if provoked, doesn't constitute a one-game suspension, what does?

Goodell is playing the role of bad cop, and while it is important to remove dangerous helmet-to-helmet hits and spearing from the game, keeping football from becoming hockey also should be a priority, even if Finnegan did have it coming.

What happened between Johnson and Finnegan was this: Playing about a yard off the line of scrimmage, Finnegan shoved Johnson in the face mask after the ball was snapped. Johnson grabbed Finnegan's face mask and ripped his helmet off. Finnegan then pulled Johnson's helmet off and the two wrestled to the ground.

Johnson landed two punches to the top of Finnegan's head and missed an uppercut to his jaw before officials broke the fight up and ejected both players.

The tussle would have been just another night in the National Hockey League. In the NFL, it was big news because fighting is neither encouraged nor condoned. A player is penalized for taking his helmet off on the field, and yet there were Johnson and Finnegan, helmets off, acting as if they were in a cage fight.

Afterward, Johnson admitted he lost his cool. He and Finnegan had gone at it before, and Johnson, usually a levelheaded player, let Finnegan get the best of him.

"I just lost my cool and I wish I could take back what happened, but I can't," Johnson told reporters after the game. "I'm pretty sure that I'll be disciplined for it. When that time comes, I'll find out what it is and have to deal with it."

What the Eagles will have to deal with now is preparing for one of the most dangerous wide receivers in the league when they are already down one starting cornerback. Ellis Hobbs is out for the season with a neck injury, although Samuel, who missed the Eagles game Sunday against the Bears, likely will be back to face the Texans.

His assignment, in part, will be limiting Johnson, who on Sunday became the first player in league history to catch at least 60 passes in each of his first eight seasons.

The Eagles, of course, cannot rely on any gifts from the league, but given the sad state of their secondary on Sunday, they undoubtedly would have welcomed any assistance. Against the Bears, Joselio Hanson, Dimitri Patterson, and Trevard Lindley struggled to contain Chicago's receivers as quarterback Jay Cutler had arguably his best performance as a Bear.

Last week, Herremans shrugged off his $5,000 fine for clipping Giants defensive end Chris Canty, but Samuel was incensed that the league fined him an astronomical $40,000 for a helmet-leading hit on New York wide receiver Derek Hagan. Samuel said the league office was picking on him and later questioned when the significant fines would end. Even for a player making $8.9 million this season, $40,000 is nothing to laugh away.

The answer is that the league is committed to reducing helmet-to-helmet hits and hits to defenseless players. While they certainly did not condone the foolishness that went on between Johnson and Finnegan, they did not take it further than an ejection and a fine.

Samuel, wrote on his Twitter feed, @Thepresidentcb, on Monday morning: "Cortland Finnegan what an idiot! I wish they paid him more money to be an idiot. How about go make a play, that's how you get em."

Because the league didn't act more strongly, Samuel will have to make plenty of plays on Thursday. He will have his hands full, even if his wallet is lighter.