Welcome to the circus

There are a few things you can say about last night's Thursday Night Thunder, or Thursday Night Raw, or whatever other professional wrestling brand you find suitable for attachment.

One is that the NFL can't possibly ding Cleveland Browns linebacker Myles Garrett for a helmet-to-helmet hit, on account of Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Mason Rudolph wasn't wearing a helmet, on account of Garrett had ripped it off and was beating him with it.

Another is that it's a good thing there were no folding chairs at hand, or Garrett probably would have been beating Rudolph with one of those, too, ala Rowdy Roddy Piper ambushing Hulk Hogan back in the '80s.

Yet another is it's a good thing Devil's Island is no longer a going concern, because that's where Roger Goodell would be sending Garrett if it were.

You simply cannot rip off a player's helmet and hit him with it in the NASH-unal FOOT-ball League, a corporate monolith ssustained by violence, but, damn, son, not that kind of violence. You especially cannot rip off a player's helmet and hit him with it if he's a quarterback, because one of the NFL's strictest codicils is the Tom Brady Rule -- aka Hey, Stop Breathing On That Man, Can't You See He's (Insert Major-Product-Endorsing Quarterback Name Here)

So not only did Myles Garrett go all WWE on a guy at the end of the Browns' 21-7 win over the Stillers, he went all WWE on a quarterback. Yikes. Colin Kaepernick just scootched over to make room for him in NFL purgatory.

It will be interesting, to use just one appropriate word, to see how the NFL responds to this. At the very least you figure Garrett will get a record sitdown, even though Rudolph started the whole thing, and it was a 2-on-1 situation with Garrett the "1." And at the extreme end of things?

Well, here are a few possibilities:

* Mandatory attendance at a five-hour Power Point presentation on workplace safety.

* Mandatory attendance at Tom Brady's award-winning seminar, Why You Can't Hit Me. With guest appearances by Aaron Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes, Drew Brees and others.

* Mandatory attendance at an I'm OK, You're OK, Now Put Down The Damn Helmet seminar.

* Three months in the hole.

* Community service in various Pittsburgh sports bars.

Yessir. That'll learn him.