Is “Player Safety” Really the Focus?

       Chuckleheads, it has been too long and I have a lot to talk about in the sports world: so let’s get back on this journey together!
        For years now, the NFL has painted a picture that their main goal is to make the game safer. In print, the idea sounds great, but is it really helping with safety? The league seems to only make calls for helmet to helmet when it is suits them. The push for seasons expanding to 18 weeks has been floated around. Football is a contact sport, and if athletes continue to grow bigger, stronger, and faster, there is going to be an added element of danger. Changing rules and staples of the game has not and is not helping the game or the product the NFL is producing.
The NFL leads the way with teaching proper tackling to prevent injury. This has included implementing programs such as the “Heads Up” training. This program offers – and, in many states, requires – youth and high school programs the opportunity to learn the proper way to tackle to avoid head, neck, and spinal injuries. The NFL also started using an independent athletic trainer know as ACT spotters. The purpose of these trainers is to spot potential head, neck, and spinal injuries. This all sounds great, right? Ask yourself why week in and week out you see plays where players get up and are visibly disoriented, and yet are back in a play or two, or even worse: left on the field. Concussions and injuries are a part of the game and players fully understand that when they start playing – now more than ever. The question is: why put all these people in place to identify these injuries if they are just there for show?
With players getting bigger, faster, and stronger every day with new training supplements and private training sessions, the league is taking the stance that the lower the hit, the better. This is a good and a bad thing all rolled into one jumble. With head safety, eliminating or trying to eliminate helmet to helmet hits makes total sense – no one can argue that fact. Targeting is the penalty that is used as a deterrent for these types of hits. It’s simple: the officials deem your hit to be targeting and you are gone for the rest of the game, plus what the league gives you as a punishment. Targeting is where the argument goes off the rails. Countless times we have seen textbook-form tackles called as targeting, and that’s where the League is forcing players to change tactics to make a tackle. Players are now forced to make a split-second decision to hit a player in the chest or go lower. The lower the hits go, the greater the increase is for lower body injuries such as knee injuries, ankle injuries, and other lower body problems. In reality, they have attempted to solve one risk injury by opening the players up to other types of injuries. Doesn’t make much sense, does it?
The league only claims safety when they are getting bashed for being unsafe, and then the solution to the problem is to make the games unwatchable because, as an average fan, you have no idea what a good tackle and bad tackle is and players are still getting hurt. Improving the form of tackling will help the head, neck, and spinal injuries to decrease. Quit teaching people to launch themselves into others and teach them to wrap up and keep the legs moving. The League has started to do this with things they have implemented, but there is still enormous room for growth and improvement. The biggest lie is that the NFL doesn’t love the big knockout shots, and do you know why that is? Because the fans of the football love to see big hits – because that is what the game is.
Written by: Carlo Guadagnino