At the end of a first-quarter run play Sunday, Lions linebacker Tahir Whitehead stepped over teammate Anthony Zettel and landed instead on Chicago offensive tackle Charles Leno. Brad Biggs of The Chicago Tribune tweeted out a video of the incident Tuesday, with the caption: “Intentional act?”

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According to Whitehead, absolutely not.

“Right after the play, I realized what happened,” Whitehead said. “He got up, he asked me, ‘Yo, you did that on purpose?’ I’m like, ‘No, I’m not that type of guy.’ Let him know it wasn’t intentional right after the play, then we just went about our business.”

Whitehead was not flagged for a penalty. NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy told The Athletic via email that the league would review the play, but only as part of “standard procedure.”

“Every play of every game is reviewed,” McCarthy wrote.

The minimum fine for “striking/kicking/kneeing” an opponent — the area under which this likely would fall — is $9,115 for a first offense during a season. Whitehead’s teammate, Jarrad Davis, was hit with that fine amount for a bodyslam of Arizona tight end Jermaine Greshman back in Week 1. The league can increase the number, if it deems the violation particularly egregious, but that’s a rarity.

A suspension also is a possibility under the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement, but such an outcome would be shocking here, to say the least. The NFL did suspend Detroit center Dominic Raiola back in 2014 for stepping on Chicago’s Ego Ferguson, though Raiola had a long list of conduct violations to his name by then.

Sunday, Leno appeared to kick his leg out in Whitehead’s direction after Whitehead moved off of him, further evidence that the Bears lineman believed it to be intentional. The Bears did not practice Tuesday, so Leno will not be available to the media again there until Wednesday. He did not comment on the play after the game Sunday.

“I never even thought about it,” Whitehead said. “I felt like it was nothing, he felt like it was nothing, and I felt like it would be nothing.”

Coming to his defense via Twitter was his wife, Shannon, who responded to Biggs’ tweet with this comment:

I’m appalled. My husband would NEVER intentionally attempt to hurt another player. I won’t stand by and allow you or any other media personnel to question his integrity or defame him in any way.

— Shannon Whitehead (@Shananigans59) November 21, 2017

Certainly, history is on her side. This is Whitehead’s sixth NFL season, and he has been penalized just three times total for unnecessary roughness, none since the final game of Detroit’s 2014 campaign. He was fined for that most recent infraction, which occurred when Whitehead hit Dallas wide receiver Cole Beasley in the head during Detroit’s playoff loss to the Cowboys.

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Whitehead also picked up an unnecessary roughness flag on special teams late in a 2013 loss to the Packers and another earlier in the ’14 season, for a tackle of Saints running back Mark Ingram.

Nothing that would earn him the label of being a dirty player.

“I know who I am, everyone who knows me knows I play the game as clean as you can play the game of football,” Whitehead said. “I’m not out here trying to hurt anybody. We’re all out here trying to take care of our families and provide for our families, I ain’t trying to do anything like that intentionally.”

Lions coach Jim Caldwell was asked about the play during his press conference Tuesday. His response:

“I was unaware of it until I guess it just came up this morning. And I highly doubt that’s the case that it was intentional, but I just saw it briefly.”

Nothing more came of the incident — and that term is used loosely — over the three-plus quarters that followed. There was no obvious, lingering animosity between Leno and Whitehead entering Sunday, nor is there any expectation that any will resurface when the Lions and Bears meet again in Week 15.

“I talked to him right after the play because he thought it was intentional,” Whitehead said. “Then he got up, I’m like, ‘you know I’m not even that type of guy.’ He was all good and went back to the huddle.”

(Photo by: Nam Y. Huh/AP)