Helmet contact rule a head-scratcher
The NFL has a curious and extremely annoying way of addressing safety issues. When it comes to bottom-line revenue, these people shove aside players’ health like stale garbage. When there’s no cost involved, such as the rule book, they’re full of ridiculous ideas that threaten the game’s integrity.
If the league really had concern about players enjoying their retirement years without dementia, it would wipe out Thursday night football. This is a joke, completely unfair from a competitive standpoint and a serious threat to players who need ample recovery time from a game. Instead, the league greedily accepted $3.3 billion in a new, five-year television deal with Fox and made sure the matchups look a bit more attractive.
Exhibition games routinely send key players to the hospital, sidelined for weeks or the rest of the season before it even begins. Perhaps the spectacle would be worthwhile if it remotely approached the real thing; instead, it’s a half-baked, unwatchable product designed mostly to sort out a team’s reserve units. Nothing to see here except, uh-oh, the star running back just got carted off to knee surgery.
(Which doesn’t include the Rams’ Todd Gurley, last year’s Offensive Player of the Year, by the way. Granted his wish to not risk injury, Gurley told reporters on Thursday, “That is everyone’s dream, to not play in the preseason.”)
Most coaches wouldn’t mind if the entire exhibition schedule was wiped out. They envy the collegiate game, where fans get their first, thrilling look at a team when it races out of the tunnel for the season opener. But the NFL doesn’t give a damn if players get hurt for no plausible reason; preseason games mean more money for a bunch of billionaire owners, so the discussion stops cold.
As if to mask this laughably transparent facade, the NFL gets all concussion-obsessed, turns to the rule book and decides for the coming season that “it is a foul if a player lowers his head to initiate and make contact with his helmet against an opponent.” The reaction among defensive players throughout the league: Are you kidding?
Without question, the NFL took some necessary initial steps in this regard, penalizing blatantly intentional helmet-to-helmet hits in the open field. Nobody needs to see that horrifying (and just plain stupid) brand of tackling, and it’s rare to witness it these days. But the league’s new rules mess with the art of tackling, and that’s going way too far.
The NFL seems to think the game is played in a sort of slow motion, each moment ripe for after-the-fact analysis. It’s more like the Indy 500, all about blinding speed and instantaneous reactions. Do what you can to bring that man down, or you might find yourself on the bench. “There is no ‘make an adjustment’ to the way you tackle,” 49ers cornerback Richard Sherman said. “Even in a perfect form tackle, the body is led by the head. The rule is idiotic and should be dismissed immediately.”
What this rule tells players is to be very careful about the high tackle. Ducking down — aiming for the knees — has long been dismissed as a cheap-shot tactic. So what are they supposed to do? It’s not that coaches teach players to lead with the crown of the helmet, but “these guys are dealing with world-class athletes who are moving targets,” Eagles defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz told reporters. “A little bit easier said than done.”
Worst of all, a lot of apparently textbook tackles — absolutely normal stuff for anyone who has followed the game for decades — have been flagged in the preseason.
The NFL has to realize that football-loving fans enjoy the violence; they’ll recoil in disgust if they see defenders hesitating, suddenly unsure of their technique, and look like wimps. Stash that mentality inside any NFL player’s head, and he may as well retire.
Some believe this new rule is essentially a scare tactic and won’t be as strictly enforced once the regular season starts. Already, an adjustment has been made, stating that “inadvertent or incidental contact with the helmet and/or face mask is not a foul.” Let’s hope the backtrack continues. The NFL will have no excuse for a game lost, or a playoff spot vanquished, over an episode of authentic football.
The vanishing strike
Following up on the fact that the official baseball rule book’s high strike — at the letters — simply isn’t called: One out-oftown manager said an edict was delivered to umpires several years ago, when low-scoring games were a bit too common for MLB’s liking. And there’s this: Gary Cavalli, who teaches a Baseball 101 class at Stanford, had retired umpire Eddie Montague as a guest this year. “I asked him, ‘The strike zone used to be from the letters to the knees. What is the real top of the strike zone now?’” said Cavalli. “Without hesitation, he said, ‘One ball above the belt.’ ” Wow. Nothing like blatant disregard of the rules at the game’s highest level. Better fix that before you even consider digital umpiring. ... Some have wondered if Manny Machado might be a better target for the Giants on the freeagent market. In theory, perhaps, but Machado isn’t interested in a middle-of-the-road team, and the Giants have bigger concerns than the left side of their infield. Machado also wants to be a full-time shortstop, and the Dodgers can accommodate him by moving Corey Seager to third and Justin Turner to either second or first base (with Cody Bellinger playing the outfield) . ... A bit of Bay Area-flavored nostalgia, with so many contemporary managers terrified to order a stolen base: Berkeley-raised A’s manager Billy Martin had no problem letting Oakland’s Rickey Henderson run wild on the bases. At the All-Star break in 1982, Henderson had 84 stolen bases in 88 games (en route to his record 130). Maybe there won’t be another Henderson, but in an analytics-driven climate, we will never know.