Football is experiencing a major rule change. The competition committee has ruled that “It is a foul if a player lowers his head to initiate and make contact with his helmet against an opponent. The player may be disqualified. Applies to any player anywhere on the field. The player may be disqualified.” The NFL has created a rule to prevent plays like Ryan Shaziers gut wrenching collision that caused spinal trauma in 2018 against the Bengals from ever happening again.
That’s the news. Here is the opinion. I don’t like the rule. Don’t get me wrong I’m for player safety and I’m all about the original rule of disallowing hits with the helmet on a defenseless player. However, this fundamentally changes the way the game of football is taught. Whether you like it or not tackling, effective tackling, requires wrapping up and lowering one’s head to stop the opposing player.
You can’t have the sport of tackle football without fundamental tackling. That is just a fact. The other part of this rule I disagree with is it gives way too much lee way to human error. Right as the NFL is claiming they are fixing the catch rule now a new potential train wreck shows up. Refs make bad calls sometimes, it isn’t their fault its part of the game but determining when someone is intentionally lowering their head that is going to be hard to do. A big part of the sport of football is gravity. When you get hit human reflex is to lower your head and brace for impact. You can’t change human reflex.
It just feels like the NFL learned nothing from the catch rule. This is the new catch rule, a rule that will week in and week out infuriate half the country, make people more confused, and turn people away from the sport of football. The NFL obviously needed to take action on head to head contact, I understand that, but to make this rule so broad and open to interpretation seems like a real problem. The rule says it applies to any player on the field, will running backs no longer be able to lower their shoulder to truck a defender, you have to lower your head to do that. What about offensive line play and more importantly D line play, getting around an offensive linemen is about getting low and to do that you have to lower your helmet. What about sacking QB’s? There are so many questions left to be answered about this rule.
In the end you can’t go against player safety. At some point though you also have to realize football is a physical, barbaric sport, with monstrous men clobbering other monstrous men. Player safety is good and well but football will never truly be able to show there is player safety. Maybe it’s time to ask America, can you handle football anymore?