Do you care about player safety?

[DanT]

Originally Posted by dmahurin

****ed up or not, hits like this are what make the game fun to watch. You'd be lying to say you don't enjoy seeing them. And if you do enjoy them, and want to see them, then you don't care about player safety either. You may tell yourself you do, but you don't. Not talking specifically about you but just people in general.

That was a completely legal hit.http://bayarea.sbnation.com/49ers/20...e-early-doucet
I don't have a problem with hits like that. That was shoulder first into a receiver's torso. There's something that receivers can do to avoid getting lit up like that, which is to not try to catch passes right in front of safeties. Clean hits are absolutely fine with me. If a ball carrier is going out of bounds but takes an extra step or two in front of the pursuing defender, I want the defender to deliver a clean inbounds hit. That's part of the game in my opinion. If a player doesn't want to get hit, then he should step out of bounds earlier.

I do care a lot about player safety, though. I don't like players taking unnecessary risks, especially players who will not realize until far down the road that they did things to themselves that were not in their interests.

If a player gets lit up, I want there to be independent and qualified experts evaluating whether the player is ready to return to action. That's a simple step to take. Teams that know how to protect their players will benefit at the expense of teams that don't. That's how the game should be.

[chiefzilla1501]

Originally Posted by DanT

That was a completely legal hit.http://bayarea.sbnation.com/49ers/20...e-early-doucet
I don't have a problem with hits like that. That was shoulder first into a receiver's torso. There's something that receivers can do to avoid getting lit up like that, which is to not try to catch passes right in front of safeties. Clean hits are absolutely fine with me. If a ball carrier is going out of bounds but takes an extra step or two in front of the pursuing defender, I want the defender to deliver a clean inbounds hit. That's part of the game in my opinion. If a player doesn't want to get hit, then he should step out of bounds earlier.

I do care a lot about player safety, though. I don't like players taking unnecessary risks, especially players who will not realize until far down the road that they did things to themselves that were not in their interests.

If a player gets lit up, I want there to be independent and qualified experts evaluating whether the player is ready to return to action. That's a simple step to take. Teams that know how to protect their players will benefit at the expense of teams that don't. That's how the game should be.

Here's the problem. That's a legal hit, but if the receiver did anything (e.g. duck or go low), then it becomes an illegal hit. And then the defender would have complained about intent. "Oh, well I was going for the torso, but the receiver ducked."

Sorry, I don't like those kinds of tackles. That's a kill shot where he missiles into the defender with his shoulder. That same play could have been made by making a play for the ball or a hard form tackle.

[DanT]

Originally Posted by chiefzilla1501

Here's the problem. That's a legal hit, but if the receiver did anything (e.g. duck or go low), then it becomes an illegal hit. And then the defender would have complained about intent. "Oh, well I was going for the torso, but the receiver ducked."

Sorry, I don't like those kinds of tackles. That's a kill shot where he missiles into the defender with his shoulder. That same play could have been made by making a play for the ball or a hard form tackle.

Interesting. If it's possible for a receiver to do something to take an unnecessary blow to the head in order to get some penalty yards, then that would defeat the purpose of the defenseless receiver rule, wouldn't it? Yeah, I could see how that would be a problem. Fortunately, for the Goldson on Doucet hit, that didn't happen, but I could see how a similar situation could arise and then lead to the perversity that receivers make themselves unnecessary victims.

I also see what you mean by the hard form tackle perhaps being preferable. Tangentially related to that, I have to say that the celebratory behavior of Goldson afterwards was classless. Still, he did carry out the primary responsibility in that situation for a defender, which is to administer enough force cleanly on the receiver to make it very difficult for the receiver to complete the reception. A hard form tackle could have done the same thing.

[chiefzilla1501]

Originally Posted by DanT

Interesting. If it's possible for a receiver to do something to take an unnecessary blow to the head in order to get some penalty yards, then that would defeat the purpose of the defenseless receiver rule, wouldn't it? Yeah, I could see how that would be a problem. Fortunately, for the Goldson on Doucet hit, that didn't happen, but I could see how a similar situation could arise and then lead to the perversity that receivers make themselves unnecessary victims.

I also see what you mean by the hard form tackle perhaps being preferable. Tangentially related to that, I have to say that the celebratory behavior of Goldson afterwards was classless. Still, he did carry out the primary responsibility in that situation for a defender, which is to administer enough force cleanly on the receiver to make it very difficult for the receiver to complete the reception. A hard form tackle could have done the same thing.

Here's the easy answer to this. If you form tackle, you're probably not going to get flagged. That goes for defenseless receivers too. That goes for unintentional helmet-to-helmet. Anytime you missile yourself into a defender with your helmet or with a lead shoulder (vs. your shoulders), you have no reason to complain even if your intention was to go after the torso or chest. You might accidentally go too high or your offensive guy you're trying to hit might go too low.

It's why I have no problems with flagging and penalizing these hits. If you want to stop getting flagged, then stop missiling yourself into players.