In Week 2, after a win against the Miami Dolphins, 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk celebrated by miming drinking a beverage. The league had earlier ruled that ‘Juice’ had violated Rule 12, Section 3, Article 1 during the act and was labeled as “imitation of chugging a beer.”
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However, the league has now admitted to its mistake, asserting that Juszczyk was celebrating drinking a juice box and not a beer, as the Niner had claimed before during a presser.
“The NFL has rescinded the $14,926 fine it imposed on 49ers FB Kyle ‘Juice’ Juszczyk for what it thought was a distasteful celebration of chugging a beer. The league said it was withdrawing the fine ‘because his celebration was simulating drinking a juice box, not a beer… Fine rescinded,” ESPN senior NFL insider Adam Schefter reported Tuesday.
After the fine, Juszczyk responded by clarifying that it was not an alcoholic beverage he was imitating.
“I wasn’t drinking beer in my celebration. I think you guys all know my nickname is Juice. I have ‘Juice’ on my pads. The stadium yells ‘Juice’ when I catch the ball. When I celebrate, I celebrate by drinking juice, and it’s been that way for years. I was as surprised as anybody when I got a fine,” he had earlier said with an unsurprising tone of frustration in his voice.
His teammates, meanwhile, had piled on the seemingly ridiculous fine, joking about changing his nickname. “We’re gonna sign a petition: Juice’s new nickname is ‘Beer’ now,” tight end George Kittle had joked with a straight face.
Around the same time, Juice had also decided to officially appeal the decision. He even told the press how the appeals process generally works in cases like these. “It’s what I imagine a court hearing would be like. They read your fine and give you the letter of the law,” he explained.
He further talked about how the league would allow him to speak about the day in question and explain the thought process behind his actions, if any. At some point, during this process, the aggrieved party’s agent comes forward to re-enforce their point, after which the NFLPA gets to join in. “And then you wait and hear your response,” the Niner explained.
While all this might seem a bit complicated, in this particular case, Juszczyk’s options were rather limited.
Juszczyk’s common-sense defense had the NFL ridiculed
Other than the fact that Juszczyk’s ‘Juice’ moniker remained self-explanatory to the whole process, the Niner’s fullback also made it a point to call out the inherent hypocrisy of the fine.
“Even if it was beer, I don’t think that should be a problem with all the beer endorsements that we have in the NFL … We have everything. So even if it was beer, which it wasn’t, I still felt like it wasn’t an infraction,” he argued.
Juszczyk, a Harvard graduate, turned 35 this April and is in his 14th year of professional football, 10 of which he has spent with San Francisco. He is also a 10-time Pro-Bowl Fullback and gets serenaded to the chants of ‘Juice’, every time he walks on to the pitch.
So, naturally, neither fans nor experts ever took too kindly to the fine, especially after Juszczyk went on X immediately after the receiving the news of the fine and tweeted, “Can’t make this stuff up.”
Some time later, he got together with his fashion designer wife, Kristin Juszczyk and together the couple posted a video of them juicing oranges and calling it a “$14,926 glass of orange juice.”
Thankfully, the matter’s closed now… at least for Juszczyk. Unfortunately, Dallas Cowboys’ Tight End, Jake Ferguson has also found himself on the receiving end of some prohibition-era styled moral policing after a fake-beer shotgun celebration over the weekend.