Helmetless FootballOctober 4, 2011
by: Aaron Stern
As the concussion epidemic in the NFL gains steam, people have begun to ask the question: What if we didn’t play with helmets at all? The hypothesis behind the question is that if players played without helmets they wouldn’t launch into each other head-first, using their shielded skulls as weapons to dislodge opponents from the football and/or their senses.
Ben McGrath’s definitive exploration of what appears to be the increasingly violent nature of the NFL’s on-field product suggested that the troubling increase in early and violent deaths of the league’s alumni is threatening not just the players, but the future of the league itself.
Players have gotten bigger, stronger, and faster: Today’s wide receiver would obliterate yesterday’s defensive tackle in a cage match. Meanwhile, offensive masterminds have devised schemes that would have given Vince Lombardi a stroke. And just as the game has gotten exponentially faster in every way, modern science has illuminated the fragility of the human brain in a way that was unimagined even five years ago. It all adds up to the troubling reality that football players at any level – but particularly at the high-speed, high-impact professional level – will suffer lasting brain damage; there is really no doubt about that anymore, it is just a matter of how much.
It is impossible to know how many concussions players of the-day-before-yesterday’s era of helmetless football suffered. Undoubtedly they suffered many. But in those days the game was centered around the run, not the pass, meaning that it resembled rugby as much as it resembles today’s football. Players didn’t sprint across the field and hit each other with the force of car crashes like they do now. Removing helmets from today’s game might cause players to use more caution, but it would still turn NFL fields into triage units every Sunday.
The NFL’s solution to the concussion epidemic has been to put a Band-Aid on a ruptured artery by using fines and the threat of suspensions to attack players who make violent hits on other players. This back end approach does not deal with the real problems that cause concussions.
If the NFL really wants to tackle this problem head-on, it may need to take a long look at itself in the mirror – and a look back at those black-and-white days of smash mouth football. The league has taken the reigns off the passing game over the last ten years, making it illegal for defensive backs to have any contact with receivers at all beyond five yards. Techniques that used to be taught as coverage fundamentals – putting a hand on a receivers hip as you run with him stride-for-stride with your head turned back, looking for the football; putting one arm on the receivers back as you lunge across him to break up a pass – are illegal now. Nothing slows receivers down now until they are laid low by brutal hits that harm players on both sides of the ball.
The passing game sells tickets, but in pursuit of that end-goal the NFL has jeopardized the safety of its players. Taking helmets away from players probably isn’t the answer, but if the league is serious about protecting the men who make the game it may want to take a step towards the past and slow the game down.
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