Is the NFL prepared to reinvent its sport over night, or is their new league-wide law (in effect immediately) more of a scare tactic?

SCOTT JACOBS

It seems like the NFL is trying to extract the violence without taking away the action.  It seems that Roger Goodell and friends are trying to make an incredibly dangerous sport appear safer to those who disdain it.  It seems that in an age of instant replays, 3d broadcasts, and high definition, the NFL doesn’t want to see someone lying dead on their football field.

It’s been a strange week for the NFL.  A slew of violent hits on Sunday apparently was enough to get the league’s big wigs to sign off on this sudden and dramatic change.  Pittsburgh’s James Harrison is reportedly contemplating retirement because he’s not sure if he can play in a league where you get fined $75,000 for something legal (well, it used to be legal on the football field at least).

Everyone seems to have an opinion on the NFL’s hot button issue of the season.  Former NFL players, now ESPN analysts Matt Milen and Trent Dilfer decried the NFL’s new policy as a game changer (and not the good kind).  Steve Young on Monday said, the game will be different now, they’re trying to make it safer.

I’ll say this: to take violent hits out of the NFL is like trying to ban crashes in NASCAR.  How do you do it?  You have guys all jacked up, hopping around on the field with loads of adrenaline, taught to level the snot out of the opposing guy.  Of course there’s a strategy.  It’s finesse with the physicality. You can’t touch the guy after 5 yards if you’re a corner back, but when he goes across the middle, errant pass or not, your hit stick goes on to mash him into soup.

So now what?

Does this new rule trickle down to quarterbacks too?  If a defensive lineman comes flying in at a QB from his blindside and drills him moments after he releases the ball do you suspend him too?  That’s violent.  That’s dangerous.  But that’s how games have been played in this league for years.

While I understand the NFL is trying to take a stance of safety, I think they’re in the wrong sport to do it.  At the end of the day football is a full contact, ready or not here we come clash.  Guys are bigger, stronger, and more elusive than ever before.  Players can lift 400 lbs.  Guys who weigh 300 lbs can get to the quarterback like a gazelle.  With supplements (and i don’t mean PED’s), better training, more intense competition, and a sport that doesn’t even guarantee their player’s contracts beyond each season, each player goes onto that field with purpose.  They want to impress their coaches.  They want to rile up their team.  They want to set the tempo.

The NFL is not a sport for wimps.  It’s not the UFC, but it’s not ballerina dancing either.  These players understand the situations they’re putting their body in when they step on that gridiron, and they accept the danger that comes with playing such a dangerous sport.  Sometimes a guy gets in an extra shot that is obvious and unnecessary, but other times guys are flying around like they were shot out of a cannon, and they can’t just stop on a dime or move their helmet down or to the left.

Physicality is part of the game, but there’s no finesse to hitting.  You go after a guy when you see him.  Maybe you have a technique, maybe you lunge at him, but in the end you do what it takes to knock that pigskin out or to get him to the ground.  Sometimes in the sport that involves full on collisions.

And there’s not a doubt in my mind that the players in the NFL are getting too strong for the game.  In other words, it’s inevitable that one day a player will get killed on the field, because their bodies weren’t designed to take this kind of punishment from these freakishly strong players.

So what in this article leads you to believe I’m taking a wait and see approach? I’m curious how many guys do get suspended.  I think we’ll find out real quick what the NFL considers a big time hit, and what they consider a violent hit.  If half of a team’s backfield is getting yanked out of their team’s following games because they can’t play another way then we have a problem.  But maybe, the NFL’s message is stronger on paper than it is in reality.  Maybe the NFL is trying to scare these guys without actually going through with it.

Guys will get suspended from this, no doubt.   But is it going to be as frequent as we’ve been led to believe?  That’s the question.

And o by the way: I guess it’d be a bad time for them to release another version of NFL Blitz.  Yeah.

Photo: AP

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