A number of years in the past, the NFL publicly labeled the kickoff as probably the most harmful play within the recreation. The league then launched into an effort to not make the play safer, however to make it occur much less regularly.
It labored. Too properly.
As defined by Competitors Committee chairman Wealthy McKay in a Thursday convention name relating to this yr’s proposed rule adjustments, the 2010 season had 416 touchbacks on kickoffs, and 45,000 kick-return yards. In 2023, there have been 1,970 touchbacks and solely 13,000 kickoff-return yards.
In Tremendous Bowl LVIII, all 13 kickoffs resulted in touchbacks. As McKay identified, 12 of them landed past the top zone.
“We’ve taken an excessive amount of out of the sport,” McKay stated. “It’s too thrilling of a play.”
Now, the league is considering a dramatic about-face, with the kickoff going from being a meaningless play to the kickoff resulting in a return nearly each single time it occurs. If the adjustments to the kickoff have been fueled by an uptick in concussions, pumping a whole bunch of extra reside performs into the sport over the course of a season will certainly end in extra concussions.
That may appear complicated. The truth, nonetheless, is that it’s not about concussions. It’s about catastrophic accidents, just like the one suffered in 2007 by former Payments tight finish Kevin Everett and the one suffered in 2010 by former Rutgers defensive lineman Eric LeGrand.
The problem isn’t contact. It’s high-speed collisions. Two gamers run at one another. They attain most velocity. They instinctively dip their helmets simply earlier than impression. The forces congregate, doubtlessly, in a participant’s cervical backbone. A bone presumably breaks, it presumably damages the spinal twine, and it presumably ends in a severe damage, or worse.
That’s what the league is attempting to keep away from, greater than anything. Concussions are going to occur in soccer. Critical neck accidents usually tend to occur when two gamers are operating towards one another at their top-end speeds and colliding whereas entering into reverse instructions. The physics of the collision end in monumental forces on doubtlessly delicate areas of the physique.
Though the league hardly ever couches it in these phrases, McKay alluded to the priority on Thursday.
“We’ve got to scale back the area and pace that this play was, traditionally,” McKay stated. “The area and pace created an damage issue that — it’s time for us to vary that.”
Take into consideration what it will imply for the league to have a Damar Hamlin-style state of affairs that resulted not from a fluke blow to the chest however from a predictable blow to the pinnacle. The NFL weathered, for probably the most half, the storm of fogeys conserving their children from enjoying soccer. If a participant suffers everlasting paralysis or dying on the sector resulting from a damaged neck suffered in a high-speed collision throughout the kickoff, the availability of future professional soccer gamers may very well be choked off, immediately.
Throughout his July 2022 deposition within the lawsuit over whether or not the NFL will have the ability to foist the price of the concussion settlement onto its insurance coverage firms, Commissioner Roger Goodell downplayed the hyperlink between children not enjoying soccer and the finally not having sufficient professional soccer gamers.
“I wasn’t as anxious in regards to the NFL recreation as a result of only a few children that have been enjoying youth soccer make it to the NFL,” Goodell stated at web page 271 of the transcript, a replica of which PFT has obtained. “I [sic] in all probability it’s lower than one %. So I don’t assume that will impression us.”
I feel it will. A few of these “lower than one %” who develop into highly-skilled soccer gamers may find yourself specializing in a special sport, if their mother and father yank them out of soccer if/when 20 million or extra witness everlasting paralysis or worse on the sector throughout a recreation.
Regardless, that’s what the league is attempting to keep away from. If it was about limiting concussions, they’d simply do away with the kickoff and put the ball on the 25. It is a option to eradicate the chance of one thing far worse than a concussion.
And the excellent news is that the present proposal ought to do this, by packing a lot of the gamers collectively in an area the place they gained’t have the ability to attain the very best attainable pace and collide whereas shifting in reverse instructions.
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