A bad development has just come up for the Minnesota Vikings in their game against the Tennessee Titans.
With about 11:30 remaining in the second quarter of play, Vikings' cornerback Antoine Winfield intercepted a Matt Hasselbeck pass and returned it deep into Tennessee territory. After the play, Vikings' rookie safety Harrison Smith was charged with a personal foul and ejected from the remainder of this afternoon's game.
It was thought at first that Smith had thrown a punch at a Tennessee player, but the replay showed that he pushed an official off of him that was attempting to back him away from a Tennessee player. That's an immediate ejection in the National Football League, and the rookie from Notre Dame was given the proverbial thumb.
With the Vikings already short-handed at safety with Andrew Sendejo and Mistral Raymond nursing ankle injuries, it might come down to Smith's Notre Dame teammate Robert Blanton, the Vikings' fifth-round pick in the 2012 NFL Draft, to line up next to Jamarca Sanford for the majority of the remainder of today's game. Blanton hasn't seen much time of defense this season, so it will be interesting to see how the secondary plays for the rest of the afternoon.
Blair Walsh has just added a 42-yard field goal to make the score 10-0 in favor of the Vikings with 10:27 left in the second quarter of play.
Here's an animation of what happened to Smith to get him ejected. The folks at CBS didn't show a whole lot of what happened, unfortunately.
