Wednesday, December 22, 2004

NFL Pick of the Week - This is Still Football, Right?

Real post on Fridays game coming up shortly, but this grabbed me and just had to be posted.

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Line of Scrimmage: Week 16 - NFL Should Ban "Horsecollar" Tackles

By Tony Moss, NFL Editor

Philadelphia, PA (Sports Network) - Whether you like Terrell Owens or despise him, when word came down Monday that Owens would likely miss the rest of the season due to injuries suffered in the previous day's win over the Cowboys, you had to feel a touch of disappointment.
Eagles receiver Terrell Owens is tackled by Roy Williams
There are many, including a wealth of folks in San Francisco, Dallas and Baltimore, who would enjoy seeing Owens fall flat on his face on the big stage. But that means dropping a critical pass to lose the game, not breaking a fibula and spraining an ankle to jeopardize the immediate future of his team.

I am paid to be an objective observer of the league, but even I was sick to my stomach as I heard Philadelphia trainer Rick Burkholder break the solemn news. No true fan wants to see one of the league's most electrifying players wiped from the lineup by something like this.

Then I flashed back to Week 11, when the same player that tackled Owens, namely Cowboys safety Roy Williams, applied the same "horse-collar" technique in bringing down Ravens running back Musa Smith. Smith's day ended with a compound fracture of his right tibia, a positively gruesome injury for both the player and anyone unlucky enough to have witnessed it. Williams has now been responsible for as many broken bones as interceptions this season, and while no one is accusing him of intending to inflict injury, the thoroughly unlikable Williams wasn't NOT trying to inflict injury either. Know what I'm saying?

Whether necessary or not, Williams gets a pass for the bone-snappings because both hits were technically legal. But should they have been?

Bringing a player down from behind by the neck or shoulders obviously places a great deal of force on the ball carrier's legs. And because the hit is generally applied from behind or the blind side, the player being tackled is unable to prepare to be dropped as he would with a more conventional tackle. The risk of injury with a hit of this type is great, and a league that preaches safety for its players needs to take notice.

The NFL limits face masks, blocks in the back, crackback blocks, and chop blocks due to the risk of injury, and also penalizes players for late hits and tackles out of bounds. The league fines players who make helmet-to-helmet contact or throw forearms, like Jacksonville's Donovin Darius did to Green Bay's Robert Ferguson last week. Darius was fined $75,000 for his hit.

Is the horsecollar tackle more dangerous than a forearm? Maybe you should ask Owens, who will be hobbling around on crutches while Ferguson recovers from his sprained neck to suit up for the playoffs.

Enforcing a mandate against this type of tackle would require some deliberation by the league. The tackling of a ball carrier from behind is as common as the man in motion, and pulling a player down by the jersey is not a dirty or dangerous hit in and of itself. A period of adjustment would be required so that players and officials could learn the subtle differences between what is acceptable and what is dangerous.

But if the league doesn't do something, it is going to watch as more standout players like Owens suffer a premature end to their seasons, or worse, their careers.

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This is a tough sport, injuries are going to happen. That's a fact. The NFL keeps trying to make this a game that is exciting with all the camera angles, shorting up the play clock, etc... Yet the same writers that are making money from these changes, that bring the viewers to the screen and the field, have the audacity to get indignent over the roughness of the sport, calling for more rules to "protect" the players.

We already have a system in place that makes it a penalty to look at the quartback wrong. The rule against contact on a receiver has been in place for years, it's only now that it's being somewhat enforced.

The hit that Donovin Darius made on Green Bay's Robert Ferguson, that subsquently sent him to the hospital, was and has been illegal.

Donovin Darius clotheslines Rober Ferguson


He was dealt with somewhat justly, although I would have liked to have seen a much heavier fine (75k is what he got) and a one game suspension just because of the obviousness of his intent to clothesline Ferguson.

But the so-called "Horsecollar" is nothing more nor nothing less than an appropriate way to bring a guy down from behind. You grab him and pull, it's the NFL, not afterschool flag football.

Just my $0.02 worth.