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Let's be very clear about one thing before we dive into some Thomas Davis talk here: Davis is one of the most underrated players in the NFL, even after making his second Pro Bowl last year. He is an excellent football player and an even better human being, having won the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award recently. But he's got a pretty robust history of questionable hits, culminating with his suspension-worthy shot on Davante Adams. 

If you haven't seen the play in question, you can see it below. Following an Aaron Rodgers interception, Davante Adams was trying to chase down safety Colin Jones, when Davis came swooping in, left his feat and made helmet-to-helmet contact. 

It looks even worse from the All-22 version of the shot, because you can see that Davis squared up Adams and launched in his direction.

There are some folks, mainly Panthers fans, who don't approve of Davis' suspension -- which was initially two games when the league handed it down and then later reduced to a single game -- but a deeper inspection of the linebacker's recent approach towards extracurricular physical activity shows it was very much warranted. 

In the wake of Davis' suspension, league sources in Tampa Bay told CBSSports.com's Pete Prisco this was not the first time Davis had engaged in unnecessarily taking a shot at another player. It's true: last year in Week 17, with the Panthers eliminated from the playoffs, Davis laid out wide receiver Russell Shepherd, now one of his teammates. 

It was a wholly unnecessary hit, coming after a sack of Jameis Winston and similar to the Adams hit in that it appeared, on the All-22, that Davis ran for five yards before launching himself into a defenseless player. Shepherd might have been the target from Jameis Winston, but Winston was sacked before he was hit and Shepherd clearly let up on the back end of a crossing route. 

There was some interesting chatter after this game -- Shepherd would later say there were no hard feelings about what happened and that Davis apologized and was "very, very sincere about it." Davis explained he was expecting Winston could wriggle out of a jam and find Shepherd and said "it wasn't even a hard hit, a malicious hit." Ron Rivera was mad at the Buccaneers for showing the play on the Jumbotron called that move "bush league." Mike Evans and other Bucs came after Davis on the field for the hit in question. Shepherd is now one of Davis' teammates on the Panthers. 

It wouldn't be the last time Davis drew the ire of Buccaneers fans, however. Davis was also fined earlier this season for a hit on Adam Humphries that when Humphries caught a pass from Jameis Winston and Davis delivered a helmet-to-helmet shot. Davis would be flagged and fined more than $48,000 for the hit. After the fine came down from the league, Davis took to Instagram to complain about the hit.

In a weird way, I agree with him here. It was helmet-to-helmet but it looked much more difficult to avoid than the previous hit against the Buccaneers. It makes you wonder if Tampa might have let the NFL know about the hit from Week 17 and to watch out for Davis. 

Regardless, he was fined by the NFL for his hit and it put him in the system as a "repeat offender" -- when the Adams hit happened, Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers noted as much.

"I think it was an unnecessary hit," Rodgers said. "Unfortunately, I throw a better ball that situation doesn't happen. He's a repeat offender, so I'm sure the league will deal with him according to that."

After picking up just a single fine through the first eight years of his NFL career, Davis has now been fined five times since 2014, including a fine he drew for an aggressive hit against then-Saints tight end Jimmy Graham, who has not always been best friends with Davis on the football field. 

Davis has since drawn four fines for aggressive hits, including a pricey one that comes with the one-game suspension he'll face this week when Carolina plays Tampa. 

None of this is to call Davis a dirty player. And there is still a pretty good argument that suspending him two games, when Rob Gronkowski got a single game for his cheap, after-the-play shot, is crazy. But there is solid evidence for the suspension backing up the NFL in this case, and it's something that other teams in the division have taken notice of over the past year of football.