Terrelle Pryor caught two passes for 31 yards in Sunday's win over the Rams, and this was his last reception that prompted a Tuesday evening Twitter message for the safety Cody Davis, who made the tackle on the play:

Low hits on unprotected receivers have become a problem pretty much since the league made it illegal to hit those same receivers high. We saw it in the preseason with Odell Beckham, who was on the shelf for nearly a month before returning on Monday night where he still looked less than 100 percent.

The problem, of course, is that the NFL fines players for hits near the head. Just ask Pryor's teammate, safety D.J. Swearinger. In 2013, Swearinger was a rookie in Houston and ended then Dolphins-tight end Dustin Keller's season -- and, it turns out, career -- with a low hit in a preseason game.

"With the rules in this era you've got to hit low," Swearinger said at the time. "If I would have hit him high, I would have gotten a fine. So I think I made the smartest play. I'm sorry it happened and I pray he has a speedy recovery. ... Right now it's just instinct. You see somebody come across the middle, you gotta go low. You're going to cost your team 15 yards. You've got to play within the rules."

Then-Dolphins wide receiver Brian Hartline was unimpressed with Swearinger's rationale for going low.

"It's crap," Hartline said in reponse to Swearinger's comments. "I mean I think that, me personally, if you're telling me, 'Oh, I'm so worried about going high or hurt[ing] the head,' you consciously went low then, is what you're trying to tell me."

This was Steelers linebacker James Harrison's explanation for hitting former Broncos wide receiver Eric Decker low during a wild-card game in Jan. 2012. Decker was injured on the play but Broncos general manager John Elway conceded that Harrison's tackle was within the rules given the NFL's emphasis on reducing head injuries.

"The [tackling] target is now lower," Elway said at the time. "Harrison, because of the fact that he's been fined so often, really had no other option. ... I don't think he intended to hurt Eric. But obviously because of the situations he's been in, he had to go low and stay away from the head. And it ended up costing an MCL sprain for Eric."

Luckily, Pryor avoided injury altogether. And while receivers say there is no place in the game for going low, the reality is that there is a place for it. Not because it's right, but because defenders are running out of places to hit a player when making a tackle.