"Really," he said. "It was a kickoff in the second half, and there's two guys from the wedge that are still with the returner when I got to him. He was a wedge guy -- I mean, he wasn't big, but he was probably about Chris's size." Suisham laughed, and the 6-foot-4, 247-pound Wilson rolled his eyes. "Anyhow, big guy, running up, and the returner was behind him. So I was obviously trying to get lower to get through, and he kept going lower and I kept going lower, so I got under his shoulder pads to make the tackle."

"You chopped him," said Wilson, a special-teams regular.

"I made the tackle," Suisham said.

Wilson gave him a look. "You chop him?"

"I didn't chop him." Suisham paused. " Well, technically I guess I did."

"Yeah. Illegal," Wilson said. "Thank you."

"But I made the tackle!"

"How much lower can you get before you're ducking?" Wilson asked. "Just say, 'I ducked.'"

"You say I ducked," Suisham retorted, "how could I make a tackle when I ducked?"

"You trip him?" Wilson suggested. "You're a speed bump."

"No," Suisham said. "I got to the guy. He didn't trip up on me, I made the tackle." Suisham returned to the story he had started with. "Anyway, no penalty on the play. Tuesday morning I find the letter sitting on my chair. Made $200 and the game cost me five grand. That was my first-ever fine. Wasn't even sure what the envelope was when I saw it."

I asked Wilson if he ever worries about the threat of unnecessary roughness when he sees the kicker coming up to block him.

"Not unnecessary roughness," he said, "'cause that's the macho way of saying something. 'Unnecessary roughness,' that's the clean way. He cut a guy."

"I made the tackle," Suisham said. "There's a guy in my way!"

Wilson began to recite the rule in the flat tones of someone repeating something they've learned through endless rote repetition. "In the NFL during a change of possession, whether it's an interception or a special teams play, you can't go low. You can't chop below the kness. You can't even do that in high school. It's dangerous! It's very unnecessary," he said, now answering my original question, "but there's no roughness factor. Maybe a fear factor."

"Let me ask you this," Suisham said. "Do you think, just trying to be a football player and make a play, do you think I should take the guy high, get run over, and they go down for a touchdown?"

"That's the RULES," Wilson said. "You know, in soccer, you're allowed to use your head--"

"I'm a hockey player, man," Suisham said. "Don't bring soccer into this."

"Okay. But you're not gonna try to headbutt the ball through the uprights [in football]. You're gonna kick it."

Suisham did not follow the analogy (which was admittedly less clear without the bracketed [in football] attached). "What are you talking about?

Wilson appealed to me. "He's trying to ask, 'Should I take the guy high?' Like, what do you mean? There's no going below the waist."

Well, I suggested, Suisham's posing it as a sort of ethical dilemma, about breaking the rules versus giving up the touchdown.

Wilson turned his attention back to Suisham. "How many guys was it? Two?"

"It's been a couple of years," Suisham said, "and you know how things can get exaggerated. I think there were two, but there was definitely one right in front of the ball carrier. It's kinda like a fish story, y'know?"

Wilson rolled his eyes again. "Well, if there's two guys, what you wanna do, you wanna make yourself skinny and split 'em. Make 'em both block you and take on two guys."

Suisham started to explain -- "But I'm comin' at an angle and they're going this way..." -- before settling for the basic "I couldn't do that."

"You couldn't get skinny and take on two? It's probably one guy," Wilson said calmly.

"But if I took on two, that guy's coming loose," Suisham pointed out, "and I still wanted to get to the ballcarrier."

"Maybe he thought it was two guys," Wilson suggested, "and it was one big guy."

"Hey," Suisham said. "We all made an agreement at the start of the year a couple of years ago: we said we finish at the ball."

Wilson agreed. "That's what we said."

"That's what we said," Suisham repeated. "And I understand the rules, but I'm not sure what else I should've done in that situation."

"Ask [special teams coordinator Danny Smith] about a buttonpress," Wilson suggested, but it was easier just to ask Wilson himself. "A buttonpress is when you tackle the ballcarrier with the blocker. I did it in the game Thursday. Tight end came out to block me, I just threw him into the ballcarrier. I didn't get credit for the tackle, but ballcarrier went down."

Well, fair enough. But could Suisham actually do that?

"With those guns?" Wilson asked. "Look!"

"Chris," Suisham said, "you gotta understand what you got. I'm not worried about messing myself up, but you gotta know what you're working with."

"What d'you weigh?"

Suisham shrugged. "203."

"Two hundred?!? You can make plays at 203," Wilson said, incredulous.

"I did make the play," Suisham insisted, but Wilson remained adamant.

"You cut the guy." He turned to me. "I commend him on making the tackle, but the way he got there was not right."