Want To Reduce Concussions NFL? Ditch The Helmets
Did you see that vicious hit on Desean Jackson on Sunday? Brutal, by all means. If you didnt, watch this before it gets taken down off the interwebs.
Dang! I say, dang that was a hit! Amazingly enough, there were several other helmet to helmet and wince inducing hits this past weekend and a lot of players were taken out of their respective games due to them. I mean, James Harrison of the Steelers took out two of the Browns’ receivers all by himself! That is impressive and scary all at once.
Shockingly, due to all of these injuries, the NFL is all up in arms now about the violence of the game.
Imagine that? Football is a violent game. I had no idea.
Anyway, the league feels like the only way to reduce these sorts of injury inducing hits is to hurt the offending player and his team with penalties, ejections, suspensions and fines. As a matter of fact, effective this Wednesday, anyone with a “devastating hit” or helmet to helmet blow can be suspended even if its your first time crushing somebody.
I dunno what the definition of devastating hit is, but what I do know is that I want to see it.
The foolish thing about all this is that the easiest way the NFL can actually prevent helmet to helmet hits is to do one very simple, yet controversial thing…get rid of the helmets.
That’s right, get rid of em. Ditch em. Forget about em. There have been a number of studies that show that the helmets themselves are probably the cause of a lot of these injuries, if you wanna read an excellent article on it, check this out from the Wall Street Journal last year.
If you’re too lazy to read, let me paraphrase. The original hard shelled football helmets weren’t designed to prevent concussions, they were trying to prevent fractured skulls…which is certainly a problem, don’t get me wrong. But, while helmets are great at stopping the fractured skull, they kind of produced a horrible side effect. Players now, with their “protected” heads, stopped caring about protecting their heads and used it as a weapon.
From the article,
But while these helmets reduced the chances of death on the field, they also created a sense of invulnerability that encouraged players to collide more forcefully and more often. “Almost every single play, you’re going to get hit in the head,” says Miami Dolphins offensive tackle Jake Long.
Do you think, if you were a football player, you’d be hit in the head as much if you didn’t have a helmet on? Do you think anyone in their right might would “spear” or jump leading with their head at another player to knock him down? Icertainly don’t.
There is a reason that one doesn’t see Australian Football League (Aussie rules rugby) players getting carted off the field with fractured skulls or concussions at nearly the rate that American football players do, that is because they have 25% less head injuries than NFL players.
If you don’t have that helmet on you wouldn’t be throwing yourself at someone that way. Its obvious to me that you cannot lead with your helmet or spear if you don’t have a helmet at all. I mean, if the NFL really wanted something on their heads, they could go back to the old school leather dealies they used to have. Not really the attractive option to say the least.
Sure, without helmets people will still get hurt. There will definitely be some head trauma as a result of not having a helmet and those injuries might be way more immediately graphic than a concussion since that is just the brain getting smashed on the inside of one’s head-but if everyone out there is banging heads every game because as a player you are taught to hit a man with your head first, then odds are most players are going to come down with a concussion at least once in their career whether they know they have one or not. Odds are you probably wont get a fractured skull tho.
Seriously though, if the NFL was really concerned about its players safety and the prevention of concussions, why is this not even being discussed?
Tagged with: Concussions • helmets • NFL • studies have shown
Filed under: NFL
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Because the helmets are as much a marketing tool as for player safety. And even though the NFL would never admit it, they are most interested in the former than the latter.
because this is a terrible idea. The helmets are there for a reason. Air bags can hurt a passenger, so why not get rid of air bags in cars?
seriously, are you retarded?
This IS a good idea to reduce brain related injuries. I’ve played both football and rugby. They teach completely different tackling technique. I feel I played both well within the rules, but I never had a head injury while playing rugby. Both are very tough games.
The NFL will never adopt this radical approach. They have geared this game and the players to be as fast and as strong as humanly possible. They teach at a very young age and on through the pros the benefits of being explosive with every motion you make on the field. No helmets would slow the game down…that’s the antithesis of what brought the NFL to its current state.
This new rule is simply to save face and keep the mom’s, girlfriends, and other casual fans interested in the game. They don’t want to be exposed as every bit as violent as MMA. If they were truly concerned with limiting head traumas…why aren’t they looking at the lineman….bone crushing hits with helmet to helmet contact is something that happens almost every single play in the trenches. Also, why don’t they tell the ball carriers that they are no longer allowed to lower their heads for an impact?
I’m not saying that I condone idiots making themselves missiles with the intent to injure….but you can’t take the hurt out of the game and still have NFL football…or tackle football in general. And you CERTAINLY can’t solely target the defensive players.
This may mark a resurgence of the power back…if you aren’t allowed to tackle him…he’ll deliver the blow and you’ll never get him down. I bet Jerome Bettis would have loved this rule. His average would have been a TD every play.