COMMENTARY ON NFL RULINGS & FINES OF WEEK 6, 2010
By Risa Balayem
THE ‘REAL’ TRAVESTY
“I’m going to sit down and have a serious conversation with my coach tomorrow and see if I can actually play by NFL rules and still be effective. If not, I may have to give up playing football.”
– James Harrison
The NFL’s new discipline structure for ‘egregious’ and ‘devastating’ hits is scheduled to hit the airwaves tomorrow…one day after the League handed out fines of $50k and $75k to three defensive players.
I’m not here to condone hits outside of the rules, but I must say that from what I see, and from what I’ve seen over the years, it feels like defensive players are being unrealistically vilified for upholding standard tackling techniques…mid-season.
Defensive players are currently taught to hit in the chest/torso area, which is a direct consequence of the League’s own anti-headhunting or head-to-head tackling rules. What seems to be overlooked is the offensive players’ accountability in the equation.
Defensive players are held to such a standard where they’re penalized, fined and soon-to-be-suspended, yet when an offensive player instinctively or intentionally lowers his head during the three-or-less-second progression of a tackle, the message the League is sending is that they have no responsibility for the devastation level of the collision.
The League bears tremendous responsibility on getting this one right. The constant demonizing of defensive players, without considering whether offensive players play a role in these collisions is unjust and unfair.
Steve Young, on the Monday Night Football postgame show, while ‘defending’ the League’s stance said: “There are not a lot of great quarterbacks in the League right now. Quarterbacks and receivers are not on the same page…and there’s a lot of ‘user error.’ There are 68 passes in a game now – the 2nd highest in history – being thrown by guys who are not competent to do it, and so the league is saying, ‘Holy cow, these guys are not competent to make these decisions. They’re putting the receivers in these horrible positions. We’ve got to do something.’ Other than legislate out bad quarterbacking, this is the only other option you have.”
Young went on to say: “Like it or not, it’s a different game. [They have to] protect guys from being led into disastrous hits because of incompetent players.”
I’m a Steve Young fan as much as the next guy, but his explanation was absolute nonsense. Hopefully, this was his interpretation only, and not the actual reason for the League’s re-examination of their rules and amplified disciplinary actions for defensive players.
In response to Young’s interpretation, Matt Millen rebuked: “This is what I’m getting out of the conversation: ‘It’s all your quarterback’s fault that this stuff is happening and they’re penalizing us defensive guys.’”
Trent Dilfer was more detailed in his reaction to Young’s comments: “I understand what you’re saying – I would argue that the looks (defensive schemes) are so complex and you’re seeing “amoeba defenses” all the time. It’s nearly impossible to be “right” as a quarterback, and I know the offense you (Young) grew up in, and I know how you look at football. And you played as well as anybody, but you didn’t see the complexity of looks (defensive schemes) these guys (quarterbacks) are seeing, and the (defensive) systems are still growing, and they’re still asking these offensive players to make these reads, and it’s a nearly impossible task. It’s just gonna happen…these guys are gonna get blown up. It’s a physical game and you can’t take that out of it, and I don’t think it’s an offensive issue or a quarterback issue. It’s part of the game.”
INCONSISTENCY
Several media outlets and NFL analysts Monday and Tuesday claimed that after watching video, that the only ‘egregious’ and ‘devastating’ hit that they believed was finable was the Brandon Meriweather hit on Todd Heap, due to the helmet-to-helmet hit in which Meriweather launched upward into a descending Heap’s chin. But when the fines came down on Tuesday, the League announced fines of $50k for Meriweather, $50 for Dunta Robinson’s hit on DeSean Jackson and $75k for James Harrison’s hits on Mohamed Massaquoi. Harrison was not fined for his hit on Josh Cribbs.
Photos of each hit are below, which show examples of defensive players hitting in the ‘legal’ torso area, offensive players lowering their heads, and one of a defensive player launching into an offensive player:
HYPOCRITICAL?
I don’t think there’s any argument amongst fans, analysts or staff of any NFL team that the League’s success and popularity was built on these types of hard hits. Moreover, hard hits have historically been the basis of NFL’s extensive marketing campaigns.
Even today, the NFLshop.com site lists the DVD, ‘Moment of Impact’ as its second-highest ranked video, and the video is listed in the first row of DVDs that the League is selling (see below).
Even more telling is that the League, on their nflphotos.com site, is currently selling two photos of James Harrison’s hit on Mohamed Massaquoi for up to $250 each (depending on size and framing options).
This is more than confusing…the League is fining players for these hits, yet they are further attempting to profit from the sales of images of the ‘devastating’ hits? Nonsensical. The photo is gaining much media play in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, which, I’m assuming, will lead to the League pulling the photos (below) from the site.
“GLADIATORICAL NATURE” OF THE GAME
During the Monday Night Football postgame broadcast, the issue of the physical nature of the game was raised.
Matt Millen began this part of the conversation: “This bothers me [that] people are making observations about the game that don’t have any stinking idea about what goes on in the game. Changing the whole game is wrong. You can’t take the competition and the toughness out of the games.”
Stuart Scott then asked: “Do you think that means if a player has a shot at hitting a guy really hard & clean, that he is gonna have to pull up and not hit him as hard?”
Steve Young’s response was: “Yup. Or he gets suspended.”
To that, Millen said, “That’s stupid. They need to determine what a ‘devastating hit’ is.”
Dilfer responded: “The League is taking the physicality out of game. It was built on physicality and people love it because of the gladiatorical nature of it. It’s a physical game, and the governing body of the League is gonna rob us of that.”
My hope is that Dilfer is wrong. I’ve been a fan of the game since childhood, and I’d hate to see a watered-down version of the game. My broad observation is that, yes, the League does have a responsibility to protect players from immediate injury and long-term medical issues stemming from hard hits. But at the same time, the League also has a responsibility to examine all aspects of the hits, both offensively and defensively in a 360-degree manner. The League has a responsibility to player safety, and it has a responsibility to uphold their rules, fines and penalties so that they are fair and just for all of its players, rather than for just one side of the ball.
At the end of the Monday Night Football postgame discussion, Stuart Scott read a quote from an unidentified NFL assistant coach. Scott read: “‘Playing in the NFL is not something that you’re sentenced to do. You don’t have to do it. Nobody makes you do it. It’s a privilege, and every single guy who plays in the NFL understands that these hits are part of the game. If you don’t want to be hit like this, if you don’t want to hit like this, you don’t have to play.’ That’s just one opinion of an NFL coach who used to play in the NFL.”
