Vontaze Burfict, the frequent late-hit artist, has one person firmly in his corner – his quarterback.

Raiders signal-caller Derek Carr went to the mat for his teammate on Wednesday, ripping the NFL’s decision to suspend Burfict for the rest of the season after his helmet-to-helmet hit on Colts tight end Jack Doyle.

“I don’t think he was trying to hurt that man; the man was going down,” Carr told reporters. “You see it all the time — there’s flags flying everywhere.

“We see other people choking people out, and they’re going to play this Sunday. We see other people hitting people in the helmet, and they’re going to play this Sunday. And Vontaze Burfict won’t play the rest of the year? I think that’s a little excessive, if you ask me. I don’t think it’s fair, if we really got to know the guy. If the people making the decision really knew the guy that we know, inside our building … he’s a great person, his heart is broken because he’s not playing football. The guy just wants to play football. We don’t get a lot of time to play this game in our lives.”

Carr was referring to the skirmish between Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey and Browns wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr., and Patriots cornerback Jonathan Jones’ brutal hit to the head of Bills quarterback Josh Allen as the league being unfair to Burfict.

Of course, Burfict has a long history of dirty play. The league said the suspension was the result of “repeated violations of the unnecessary roughness rules.” He is reportedly appealing the suspension, with his agent Lamont Smith telling ESPN the “12-game suspension is excessive and the play that triggered the suspension was a football play.”

Burfict has been flagged for 23 personal fouls, 15 of them for unnecessary roughness, since reaching the NFL in 2012. He had been suspended 13 times and fined in seven different seasons as a member of the Bengals. He joined the Raiders this offseason.

“I know the history situation and all that kind of stuff, but this one, especially with what went on during the week, if we’re going to be fair, we need to be fair with everybody,” Carr said.

Raiders coach Jon Gruden spoke with NFL VP of football operations Jon Runyan about the suspension.

“He knows how I feel — it hurts our team really bad,” Gruden said. “And I’m anxious to see what the appeal says. I’m not happy about it. At all. And I don’t want to say anything else about it. I’m obviously upset about it.”