This is getting expensive.
After netting $45,000 in NFL-issued fines the past two weeks, Bears safety Brandon Meriweather plans to turn down the volume on his aggressive play.
"Apparently I need to fix something if (the NFL) is concerned about my hits," Meriweather told the Chicago Tribune. "I have to change it, or else I'm going to keep getting fined. Eventually, if you get enough fines, you're going to end up getting kicked out the league. For me to continue to do something I love, I just have to change the way I play."
Meriweather was fined another $50,000 last season, all of these coming for a smattering of late and helmet-to-helmet hits that left a pile of dazed opponents in his wake. Bears coaches have asked the safety to simmer down.
"Everybody told me that," Meriweather said. "It's not necessarily what they said, but how they said it. People have told me before that I had to change my ways. I've been trying. It's just something you can't do overnight."
It's an outrageous hemorrhaging of money that would turn most of us into railway hobos, but it's not Meriweather's biggest problem at the moment. He recently was benched in favor of rookie safety Chris Conte -- a dilemma he can work to correct in his second career visit to London this week to play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (and see the Big Bang Clock).
