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Well, the one suggestion you offered was a change in headgear.
Well, that would change a lot.
But it’s also a matter of how players are coached. When you’re a kid, you are taught the basics of how to block and tackle, and of what is acceptable and what isn’t. Coaches send strong messages. Do this. Don’t do that–it’s unacceptable. You’re not supposed to do the other thing … chuckle, chuckle. I can remember my 9th grade line coach shaping my ideas of what blocking is all about.
This is why I stress cultural matters. We have a culture that rewards bullet-like assaults on QBs and ball carriers. We see them on TV highlights. Coaches reward them. Fans love them.
Go watch dads coaching pee wee football teams. Watch the techniques, values, and habits they teach 9 year olds. They are laying the foundation not just for NFL practices, but for the fan base that supports it.
Tell you a story. I’m watching my son’s first rugby game. He’s a HS junior. OK, the ball is in play and a kid on our side makes a big hit. All the football-oriented dads–including me–roar, “Great hit.”
But, see, rugby isn’t football. The big hit doesn’t necessarily accomplish much in rugby because of the live ball. And while everybody is celebrating the big hit, the other team grabs the ball and moves it on. We dads, rugby neophytes, begin to learn that big hits are NOT central to rugby effectiveness. They play a role. But controlling the breakdown is vastly more important.
OK, football isn’t rugby. We aren’t going to stop blowing the ball dead as soon as the ball carrier goes to ground. But the point is that the rugby culture operates differently, teaches different techniques of contact.
The fact is, AMerican football culture doesn’t have to be the way it is. Players can be coached to be aggressive without assaulting heads or using them as battering rams. You can attack a QB’s arm and body. It’s arguably more effective, apart from the possibility of inflicting an injury. And, if we really wanted to, we could evolve a different American football culture with values and coached techniques that avoided concussions. There is no earthly reason we couldn’t do that.
Look, I got no “answers” either. I just know that what we have is the product of a nation-wide culture. Change will have to come from changes to that culture. And football people have to be open to an evolution that involves meaningful changes to what EVERYONE–not just the refs–finds acceptable. Ultimately, it has to be based in a major change to the grassroots supporting the game.
Which is my point throughout this discussion.
The traditional football model is deeply threatened by the revelations concerning brain injuries. (So is rugby, btw.) And it is NOT just pros making 2.6 Million a year that are affected. It involves our children, our young men. In the thousands.
Are “we” open to a responsible movement to evolve a variant of the game that is safer?
Or aren’t “we”?
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What bothers me in a topic like this is the traditionalist rejection of change.
The game demands physical toughness, and that requirement won’t go away. I don’t see much of a way to protect, for example, knees. And the game is going to feature hitting.
But there are things to do to reduce the threat of truly serious injury, especially to the head. Consider the helmet. The hardness of the shell and the masks were developed to protect. But I think it’s pretty clear that they don’t protect much and have become weapons.
Want to cut back on concussions? Make the helmet soft. And remove the face mask. Force the players to play with exposed faces. That’s how football was played for many decades. And rugby players today have no protection for their faces. A few guys wear soft head gear, mainly the front rowers who are protecting their ears. But no one has face protection.
Watch a rugby international some time, and you’ll see that it doesn’t prevent people from playing a rough game very hard. But it DOES affect the technique used for tackling. No one head hunts using the unhelmeted head. That would be suicide. People learn classic tackling technique that limits damage to both tackler and tackled.
Now, there are a lot of concussions in rugby. More today than in the past. The players are bigger and faster and the game is chasing American football-styled violence. After all, the TV screens are lighting up with “big hits” as they do here. And this is a change. Old-school rugby was an incredibly tough sport, but the violence tended to involve punches and stamps, and so forth. The sort of aggression that hurt, but didn’t often maim. People knew how to tackle relatively safely. The gamje is still played that way at mid- and lower-division clubs. My son played mid-division rugby for 6 months in Leicester, and there were 50 year old guys turning out for the C games. They knew how to play without getting hurt. The game CAN be played that way. Traditionalists talk about ways to return the scrum to what it used to be–a finessed wrestling match requiring skill rather than today’s “hit”-based collisions between front rows.
The point is that you can play the game in different ways. And sporting culture determines how it will be played. And what ultimately decides everything is the culture.
When it comes to the NFL, we tend to think about what “the league” does, and how that is dictated by TV interests. But think about it for a moment. TV wants to make money. When people talk about “flag football,” TV would resist because they don’t want to lose money.
But notice what that statement means. What if flag football were MORE POPULAR than what we’re used to? TV would show that and be delighted. TV doesn’t care what is broadcast so long as it makes money.
“Flag football” wouldn’t work because American football culture WANTS THE OLD GAME! You can see that in comments on this board, all over the net, and in any conversation between fans. Football lovers WANT big hits and they WANT the sort of ersatz armor image that comes with shoulder pads and helmets. We all love that shit. I can remember when I first put on pads and helmet in HS, Damn, it felt cool. And we all love highlight reels with huge hits and the heroics of those who withstand them.
WE ALL LOVE THE GAME THAT CAUSES CONCUSSIONS!
Now, set aside for a moment our traditional expectations and demands. Just imagine a slightly different game.
Soft helmets with no masks. A football culture that from the earliest ages taught KIDS how to hit without using the head. There’s still plenty of room for toughness. Again, watch rugby and you can see it. But if the CULTURE were broadly committed to changing the techniques of contact, if football people–fans, coaches, players–shifted their values to eliminate head-hunting, you could have a pretty damn good game and a lot fewer concussions.
Of course, that’s a pipe dream. At least for now. There’s no push for that. Pundits, coaches, players, and fans are nervously wondering about all this, but no one is really willing to IMAGINE a game without traditionally key elements.
So, OK. I understand why that is. But if we are going to be intellectually honest, we need to understand something.
A traditionalist model of American football pays an unnecessarily high price in concussions because of traditional equipment, techniques, and values.
Anyone who defends that model ought to be willing to understand that price, and say, honestly, “I am willing to let human beings pay the price with body and mind so I can hold on to the entirety of my idea of football. It COULD be different, and the differences could be wonderful. But I am unwilling to take the human costs seriously enough to imagine a different game.”
‘Cause that’s where 95% of the American football establishment–fans perhaps even more than other levels–resides these days. We are willing to let young men pay the price to sustain an unnecessarily vicious game ’cause we like that game the way it is. And we especially like the helmets and vicious hits that costs people their brains. Don’t ask us to consider changing it.
What I detest is the average fan’s unwillingness to honestly recognize the price of it all.
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Barron
Janoris
Tru JohnsonBrockers
Hayes
FairleyFoles
To me, these are the tough calls. The rest are canon fodder, except perhaps for Zeurlein who, as a kicker, is affordable if they want him.
I figure they will have to choose between the 2 CBs and the 2 DTs.
E.g. DT: can Brockers step up a level? Can Fairley play consistently and prove he’s worth a big deal? If he does this, is he affordable? Which of the 2 will they want to keep?
CB: I can’t see keeping both JJ and TJ. Can JJ stop blowing plays and assert his big play potential? Can TJ play solidly all the time rather than occasionally? Actually, both could be casualties if the youngsters step up.
Hayes? Probably gone. Cap casualty. Which would be a tragedy.
Foles? Impossible to tell. How does he play? Whom do we draft? If we don’t draft a damn good-looking QB and Foles plays at least solidly, then I think they re-sign him for continuity. Maybe during the year. But this is impossible to call, given his 1-year deal.
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I have no objection to Foles. There may be something there. I hope it doesn’t cost a 2nd round pick, though.
Well, you raise the question of cost. Obviously, there
wouldcould be costs we couldn’t afford.I just don’t know enough about many things to assess this.
I think a 2nd or 3rd in ’16 might be affordable. But not this year–we’re already short some picks.
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