I want player safety. Really, I do. I'm not watching on Sunday because I want to see people get hurt, nor do I get some sort of perverse satisfaction from a player's injury. What the sport needs are rules that make sense governing player safety. Oh, wait. They've actually done an excellent job on the creation end of the rules, as no period in league history has seen this kind of attention paid to protecting its athletes, from concussion testing overhaul to the protection of defenseless receivers. Enforcement is another story. In the mad rush to remove injury as much as possible from America's game, we invariably see one or two penalties every week in every stadium that were at the very least questionable, if not outright bad calls. Now they're handing out huge fines and discussing suspensions for all offenders. That would be acceptable (maybe) if it actually solved our problem and nobody was ever harmed. Unfortunately, that's just not going to be the case. How can anybody legislate every play? Just look at Dunta Robinson's hit on DeSean Jackson, for which the Falcons' cornerback was penalized 15-yards and fined $50,000.�At first glance, Robinson's hit looks totally illegal. When you break it down though, I'm not really so sure. It's difficult to classify DeSean as a defenseless receiver on the play, because he was in the act of catching the football. From one angle, it appears the defender leads with his head, but from the other he actually initiates contact with his shoulder, which seems to indicate there should not be a foul for leading with the helmet. (Note: impact from the helmet is not a penalty when contact begins with the body.) He doesn't launch himself at the receiver either, but merely runs through him. At the risk of being unpopular, what about that was wrong? Robinson's job is to separate the receiver from the ball, and he did that. Unfortunately, Jackson was moving at the speed of light, while the defender had a head-on angle to the ball carrier. It was like a couple of freight trains colliding from opposite directions on the same track. Whether we like it or not?and I certainly don't want any more members of the Eagles' roster taking shots like that?it is part of the game. You can't take hits out of football. It's the very definition of a contact sport, where the play isn't over until the defense puts the ball carrier on the turf. How do you think that's going to end? And the players know it. They've always known it. Football can be a barbaric game. Injuries have always been a part of it. Lives are shortened as a result. Some men are never the same when they retire from a career in professional football. But the athletes are also prepared for that going in. There isn't a football player alive who doesn't understand the inherent risk he's taking every time he puts the pads on. That's why so many hold out, and fight, and scream for every guaranteed penny they can get their hands on, knowing full well it could all be over in an instant. That's football. The commissioner can crack down on illegal hits as often and as hard as he wants, but as long as the object of the game is to knock the other guy down, people are going to get injured. It's completely unavoidable.�Doesn't mean they shouldn't try to make the game safer; I just don't buy the outrage every time somebody gets their head knocked off. Know who else attempted to make their product safer? Gun manufacturers. Despite the presence of a "safety" switch, how many accidental shootings are there in the United States every year? It happens because people like guns, but they are incredibly dangerous by their very nature. The way I see it is this: the NFL should do whatever it can to make its sport as safe as possible, in a manner that does not fundamentally change how the game is played. In turn, the league and its fans need to accept that, yes, bad things are going to happen to men when they wear armor and run into each other at full throttle. If you still can't reconcile the brutality of the game with your values, stop watching, and if the league can't prevent it up to their standards without switching to two-hand touch, they should just shut down. The players, on the other hand, made the compromise a long time ago. That's why you don't see too many who willingly walk away.
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