Eventually the NFL will become unwatchable, and another football league will emerge without all the new subjective rules about contact.
If you don't allow the defensive player to lead with the helmet or make contact with head, then it needs to be the same for offensive players. And the NFL is hardly going to be like flag football. Players may not get demolished anymore but that really isn't what football should be about.
I'm waiting for the first instance of a back lowering his head two years past the line of scrimmage but making contact 3.1 yards past and getting flagged... I'm just not sure how you expect a running back to have it in his mind how many yards past the LOS he is and when he can no longer lower his head. This just seems like another bit of gray area to have to weed through. Either make it illegal or don't.
Let's play by NFL Blitz rules: 7-on-7, 30 yards to make a first down, two-minute quarters, the clock stops after every play, pass interference is legal, late hits and excessive celebrations are legal and encouraged, and the defense can tackle the ballcarrier with a suplex.
I'm sure there were complaints when Roman wussies discontinued the Christians vs. the Lions contests.
^ Yes, the rules were modified to stop the contest if one of the gladiators yelled, "Owie, that hurts!"
Just terrible. Encourages more and more dancing RBs, and discourages power football. We're getting closer and closer to soccer.
My sense is this is all about lawsuits. The NFL is now being sued by 2500+ current and former players relating to head trauma, concussions, brain damages, etc, much of which was probabally caused as much by the repeated blows they took in youth football all the way up through college than it was by the few years they played in the NFL, but that is another story. As a result of these suits, the NFL is (belatedly) trying to do everything it can to eliminate big hits (penalties, fines, new rules, etc), and manipulate media and public sentiment in their favor in the process. The problem is twofild: (1) football is an inherently violent game, and you can never make it "safe", and (2) it is precisely that violence that makes it popular. Elimate the hitting and contact and you basically have a 7 on 7 tournament, which is still atheltic and somewhat exciting, but its not the same sport and certainly not a multi-billion dollar business. Lawyers and lawsuits have ruined a lot of things. As but one example, many summer camps have gone out of business, and the ones that are left have mostly gotten rid of horseback riding, mountain climbing, rifelry and archery, etc. The same is apparently happening with the NFL, and I suspect the equipment makers and HS and college programs will be next. The rules passed in the last 5 years about "targeting" have eliminated the plays that made guys like Ronnie Lott, Jack Tatum and Chuck Cecil so popular and famous. None of those guys could play today, or at least they would be far less effective and far less notable. The hits on the old NFL "Crunch Course" videos are now almost all illegal. With this new rule, guys like Earl Campbell and Larry Czonka are now history as well, and the stule of play that made them famous would get your suspended and fined out of the league. The sad part is is its mostly all for show. The data shows that it is REPETITIVE hits to the head -- not isolated big hits -- that cause the long term brain trauma. The guys that are sufering the most from these neurological ailments in their latter years are not safeties and receivers but linemen and linebackers. These new rules so nothing to reduce the 50+ car-crash level hits that a typical O-Lineman takes/delivers in every game. Inded, there would be no way to eliminate those hits without either (1) taking the helmets and pads off (which I would favor over these bullsh!t rules) and (2) doing away with contact all together. Regardless, there is simply no way to regularte contact out of the game without completely changing and destroying it, which probably means that we are in the last decade or so of the NFL's uber-popularity as we have known it. I suspect there will be "XFL" type leagues that pop up and try to seize market share by allowing real contact, in the same way that MMA has stolen a lot of thunder and ratings from boxing. We'll see. But it is clear that the game that most of us played as kids is fast fading into history.
I don't think lawyers and lawsuits should bear all the blame for this. Owners are human beings and know the impact of the game on the players they pay. I'm not a lawyer, but I have to say I've been somewhere between sobered and heartbroken learning about the fates of the mighty men whom I loved to watch play the game when I was a youth and young adult. Mrs. John Mackey changing the dirty diapers of the man who defined what a tight end should be. Steelers Center Mike Webster losing his joy, his family, his life .. ditto Junior Seau and others. John Unitas' amazingly skilled hands reduced the the point that eating or writing his name was incredibly difficult and painful. Earl Campbell, whose legs were the very definiton of grace and power, reduced to walking painfully on two canes or using a wheelchair. Call me a wuss, but incremental changes to preserve the health of combatants is something I very much favor. With billions in revenues at stake I'm hopeful that the NFL can chart a more humane path to keep the game entertaining. For those whose entertainment requires that folks knock each other permanently silly, I guess I don't feel your pain.
Dan Patrick has mentioned something interesting about the Commissioner and his supposed desire to make things safer for players. He brings up how the league wants to add two more games to the season which is already really long and grueling. So you want to increase the fatigue on the players and increase the circumstances for injury? That's safer how?! The more I learn of things such as this helmet rule for rb's and how it seems they almost make things up as they go along just to cover their butts the more I wonder if they really do give a ****. It's sort of like how baseball all but injected steroids in players to get more HR's, hits and records broken to attract fans and attention...equaling revenue. They say bad, bad, bad but mean good, good, good.
We will call it the XFL. ---only this time the XFL or USFL will catch on because people want to watch a game without constant and unpredictable 15 yard penalties that change the outcome of the game.
