Random NFL comments/thoughts

[Motor City Sonics]

Just now, buddha said:

do you think the nhl should eliminate checking?

No, a game with that speed will have unintended head injuries, but a lot of players go headhunting now because of helmets.........not that players weren't brutal before, but they didn't headhunt nearly as much.   Any sport will have unintended injuries, but the checking in the NHL for a while was more about hurting someone than strategy of working a guy off the puck.  That has mostly gone away in recent years, but it still happens.      The NHL has gotten much harsher in recent years on penalizing players for dirty hits instead of legitimate hits.   Think of the kind of shit Matt Cooke used to do.  He'd probably get year-long suspensions now.    When Krowall would hit someone, he'd throw his hip in the their body......that's more legitimate, even though it bordered on excessive sometimes.  

[buddha]

3 minutes ago, Motor City Sonics said:

yes but passing the protocols are dodgy too because, as Damian Woody just said, players purposely lower the bar when they take the initial baseline test,  they intentionally do poorly on what they can control, so they can pass the real test.   This is partly on the player too.     The Dolphins fucked up big time here.  

then what should the protocol be?  

[MichiganCardinal]

2 hours ago, buddha said:

in fairness to miami, the dolphins have looked like one of the best teams in the league since they fired flores.

i dont know what happened with tua last week but the optics are certainly bad and the twitterati will be out with their pitchforks.

In fairness to Flores, they added one of the most dynamic playmakers in all of football this past offseason, and were already coming off a 9-8 season.

It would take a lot to convince me otherwise that this wasn't the case of two back-to-back concussions that the NFL could have prevented. If it came out that Tua lied to doctors on Sunday to get back in the game, that's one thing. I wouldn't blame the protocol at that point but rather Tua himself and the NFL culture. And would consider advocating for Tua himself to be suspended.

[buddha]

7 minutes ago, MichiganCardinal said:

In fairness to Flores, they added one of the most dynamic playmakers in all of football this past offseason, and were already coming off a 9-8 season.

It would take a lot to convince me otherwise that this wasn't the case of two back-to-back concussions that the NFL could have prevented. If it came out that Tua lied to doctors on Sunday to get back in the game, that's one thing. I wouldn't blame the protocol at that point but rather Tua himself and the NFL culture. And would consider advocating for Tua himself to be suspended.

i remember watching a 60 minutes type thing on the nfl and pain killers.  they had urlacher on there talking about taking horse tranquilizers for pain killing.  they told him all the side effects and how it will affect him down the road and he basically said "i dont care, i love playing football.  shoot me up 1000 times so i can play."

i think that's the attitude a lot of them have.  its their livelihood and they love to play it.  the money, the fame, doing a fun job every week for obscene amounts of pay.  they'll do whatever they can to keep playing.

[buddha]

a note on flores: miami did add a left tackle and tyreek hill, but they also changed the offense to make it more tua friendly and there are no reports (yet) about internal strife like there was when flores was the coach.

i think flores comes from the belichek tree and almost everyone from that tree has had a reputation for being a hard ass sob who does all sorts of questionable things and has no modern man management skills.

patricia.  mcdaniels.  o'brien.  weiss.

everyone except romeo crennell has had a hard ass attitude and being a royal jack ass about it, trying to emulate the great bill bellicheck.  i think there's a lot more to flores' failure than "stephen ross is a jerk."

[Motor City Sonics]

15 minutes ago, buddha said:

then what should the protocol be?  

I don't know that answer, but when you see a guy who can't walk straight,  it might just be a good idea to be on the safe side.    Players don't want to be seen as soft, they are usually not going to tell you to sit them.    

With Shane Morris, I am absolutely 100% sure that Brady Hoke did not see him stumble and wobble from the sideline (a very tough angle to see everything when you are focusing on the next play and not the huddle), and since he didn't wear a headset it took another play to get word to him what happened.   They did pull him out of that game when they realized it,  he didn't want to come out.    Saying it was a neck injury isn't much better for Miami because that's not exactly a good look either.  They failed badly, but Tua has to own it too.  

[Motor City Sonics]

3 minutes ago, buddha said:

a note on flores: miami did add a left tackle and tyreek hill, but they also changed the offense to make it more tua friendly and there are no reports (yet) about internal strife like there was when flores was the coach.

i think flores comes from the belichek tree and almost everyone from that tree has had a reputation for being a hard ass sob who does all sorts of questionable things and has no modern man management skills.

patricia.  mcdaniels.  o'brien.  weiss.

everyone except romeo crennell has had a hard ass attitude and being a royal jack ass about it, trying to emulate the great bill bellicheck.  i think there's a lot more to flores' failure than "stephen ross is a jerk."

don't you find it interesting that bill "accidentally" texted the wrong brian which lead to a team in his division getting in trouble.    

[buddha]

3 minutes ago, Motor City Sonics said:

don't you find it interesting that bill "accidentally" texted the wrong brian which lead to a team in his division getting in trouble.    

i dont put anything past belicheck.

[Motown Bombers]

I can't believe Belichick coaches keep getting hired. I thought for sure McDaniels wasn't going to get a job again after what he did to the Colts but leave it to the Raiders. 

[buddha]

26 minutes ago, Motor City Sonics said:

No, a game with that speed will have unintended head injuries, but a lot of players go headhunting now because of helmets.........not that players weren't brutal before, but they didn't headhunt nearly as much.   Any sport will have unintended injuries, but the checking in the NHL for a while was more about hurting someone than strategy of working a guy off the puck.  That has mostly gone away in recent years, but it still happens.      The NHL has gotten much harsher in recent years on penalizing players for dirty hits instead of legitimate hits.   Think of the kind of shit Matt Cooke used to do.  He'd probably get year-long suspensions now.    When Krowall would hit someone, he'd throw his hip in the their body......that's more legitimate, even though it bordered on excessive sometimes.  

i think they can probably do more to eliminate checking from behind and head hunting, but youre never going to eliminate concussions in a physical game.  i feel sorry for franzen, but his situation is an outlier, imo.

[Hongbit]

The reason the NFL has standard concussion protocols across the league is because teams and their medical staff couldn’t be trusted to always put player safety ahead of winning games.  

[Motor City Sonics]

Back in 1996 I was on a ride at the New Mexico State Fair, I was actually doing a live break on the air......it was one of those spinning rides - that I don't like and it came to a pretty abrupt stop and me and the promotions guy riding with me kind of looked at each other like "that's not right".............for about 2 weeks after that I had headaches, dizzy spells and constant nausea...........I didn't know it then but I probably had a concussion from the whiplash effect even though nothing hit me in the head. I have not gone on a spinning ride ever since.   It really sucked.  

[Tigeraholic1]

1 hour ago, buddha said:

do you think the nhl should eliminate checking?

I think they should elminate hockey but thats another thread.

[Motown Bombers]

 

[RandyMarsh]

I saw on Twitter that Colts RB Jonathan Taylor missed his first practice yesterday since his sophomore of high school. Considering he played 4 years in the Big 10, this is now his 3rd year in the NFL and how rbs are notorious for getting beat up that is just a mind blowing and impressive tidbit.

[Motor City Sonics]

I only watch Fox's pregame show.   How are the talking heads covering the Tua thing?   These networks are bought and paid-for by the NFL, do they dare talk honestly about the elephant in the room?  

 

[Motor City Sonics]

Strahan talked about the eye test, and common sense and the way Tua reacted after hitting his head on the ground Sunday.    The system failed Tua.   The doctors should have never let him back in that game.     

 

Have to figure out  if there is some kind of cushioning that can be put in the back of a helmet that prevents that kind of whiplash.  

[MichiganCardinal]

I’m not a doctor but this sounds no better than putting Tua out there four days later.

[RedRamage]

14 hours ago, MichiganCardinal said:

I’m not a doctor but this sounds no better than putting Tua out there four days later.

I dunno... I'm not a doctor either, but I don't think A-Fib is the same as a concussion in the sense that I don't think i'ts generally causes by impact nor is as susceptible to repeat  after the first incident. So I don't think there's the same danger, but again, not a doctor at all so just my best guess.

That said, I do think there needs to be some level of medical personnel that are outside of the teams... heck, maybe even outside of the league, that have the power to step in here and say: "A-Fib is not a joke and not something to just ignore. Until we can run some tests and know that you're not on the verge of this happening again, you're sidelined."

I just don't know exactly how to structure something like this. Football is a violent sport and some players will always be playing with some level of injury, so you don't want a medical staff that is too sensitive.  But at the same time you need obviously need someone with the ability to step in who is not answerable to the team and maybe not even to the NFL.

[RedRamage]

Here's some other idea that are swimming in the back of my head...  just throwing them out there... no idea if they would work or make sense, but here they are:

• Add another bye week (not my idea, read it somewhere else). As much as I hate bye week when the Lions have them, it makes sense to have more rest time and it extends the length of the NFL season, which I suspect the NFL would like.
• Expand the roster?  I'm somewhat unsure on this one... I don't want to see watered down talent, but would a bigger roster mean more substitutions and less hits per player per game?
• Snap limits? This might be SUPER controversial, but especially if we had bigger rosters might the NFL be able to put in a limit on the number of snaps for players per game?
• Soft-sided helmets? No idea if this makes sense, but it seems to me that a rigid helmet do as much to protect the player as the padding inside it does.  I guess it helps spread out the impact a bit, but I wonder if they were able to develop a helmet that did this without being so rigid on the outside how that would change the game.
• Thursday games only after bye week (or first week of the season).  This would mean fewer Thursday night games, which the NFL wouldn't like.  But the extra bye week would help.  I would allow Friday night games later in the season after HS football is done, without a previous bye week, as a compromise. (This would mean the Lions and Cowboys always have a bye the week before TDay.)
• Impact sensors in helmets?

[KL2]

2 hours ago, RedRamage said:

Here's some other idea that are swimming in the back of my head...  just throwing them out there... no idea if they would work or make sense, but here they are:

• Add another bye week (not my idea, read it somewhere else). As much as I hate bye week when the Lions have them, it makes sense to have more rest time and it extends the length of the NFL season, which I suspect the NFL would like.
• Expand the roster?  I'm somewhat unsure on this one... I don't want to see watered down talent, but would a bigger roster mean more substitutions and less hits per player per game?
• Snap limits? This might be SUPER controversial, but especially if we had bigger rosters might the NFL be able to put in a limit on the number of snaps for players per game?
• Soft-sided helmets? No idea if this makes sense, but it seems to me that a rigid helmet do as much to protect the player as the padding inside it does.  I guess it helps spread out the impact a bit, but I wonder if they were able to develop a helmet that did this without being so rigid on the outside how that would change the game.
• Thursday games only after bye week (or first week of the season).  This would mean fewer Thursday night games, which the NFL wouldn't like.  But the extra bye week would help.  I would allow Friday night games later in the season after HS football is done, without a previous bye week, as a compromise. (This would mean the Lions and Cowboys always have a bye the week before TDay.)
• Impact sensors in helmets?

On point 1. Not the league that hates it, well they do, but because the networks hate it. Two weeks leads to a diluted schedule and less games going on. 

On point 2. I imagine something similar with dilution. Everybody would be OK with it, if the pay can be worked out. Owners will say same portion of revenue sharing which means players would get paid less (x Dollars spread of 65 guys instead of 53) and the NFLPA won't like that. Owners won't agree to up the revenue sharing pay. 

On point 3, won't happen. Nobody wants to see Tom Brady on the field less because of snap counts. Let the stars play. 

On Point 4 and 6-- players hate any change to equipment and its fought tooth and nail. 

On Point 5: Thursday games aren't' going anywhere and bye weeks before creates a scheduling mess or teams with a bye in week 2. 

[Motor City Sonics]

Well,  a 9-6 Thursday game (with 5 mins left in the 4th)..............total garbage Thursday games. 

 

THESE GAMES SUCK !     

Point 5 - Scheduling mess?   They can make it work.  Players would LOVE to have a second bye week, the NFL season gets to dominate an extra week and you don't get shit like what we're having tonight.    If they can schedule around 31 teams, they can fix this.  Who said it would be easy?  

Okay,  Two coaches tonight that may not be around much longer.    With 10 days until the next one, Reich could be fired as soon as tomorrow and if they Broncos don't start looking better Nathaniel (Can't) Hackett won't make it to the end of his first season.    

Have we been overrating Russell Wilson for years?    Was it Pete Carroll after all? 

 

[Mr.TaterSalad]

Russell Wilson has been as pedestrian as they come this season. Grrr definitely isn't playing at the high level he had been in years past. All those weapons in Denver and he looks worse than when he was in Seattle. So much for Denver only being a QB away from a Super Bowl.

[Motown Bombers]

I hope the game ends in a tie so the Colts end up with two ties.

[Motown Bombers]