In a series of suggestions to help address dissipating fan interest in the National Football League, I offered an idea in my last post suggesting that having only 10 men on defense would add more offensive scoring and lengthen the careers of quarterbacks.
In this article, it’s time to address the elephant in the room of football (not only in the NFL). Every week, you see more and more cheap shots being delivered by defensive players using their helmet as a weapon – usually against a defenseless offensive player. It’s like some players believe this is a game of Rock ’em, Sock ’em Robots, and that you can simply push their heads back into place again without any repercussions (or concussions, for that matter).
On Monday night, a player for my long-time favorite team, the New Orleans Saints, delivered such a blatant cheap shot to the head of another player that the assailant should have been hauled in front of a judge the next day for assault charges. If you didn’t see it, Saints’ defensive back Kenny Vaccaro used his helmet as a weapon to deliver a violent and unnecessary head shot to Minnesota Vikings’ wide receiver, Stefon Diggs. Diggs’ head snapped back, but, fortunately, he was able to continue playing for the Vikings.
Vaccaro, who was suspended last season for four games due to using performance enhancing drugs, just received a paltry fine of $24.309 for this unnecessary and totally avoidable play which could have broken the neck of a defenseless wide receiver. Based on his 2017 salary of $5.676,000, this week’s minuscule fine amounts to 0.43% of Vaccaro’s annual pay.
In layman’s terms, if I made $50,000/year, this would equate to only $214 out of my pocket. That is considered chump change by the average fan, and it certainly sends a “wink, wink” message to both the player and the rest of the NFL that you can continue getting away with this type of dirty play in the future without a significant response from the league.
Week after week for the past several years BK (before Kaepernick), I have watched the NFL’s defenders deliver more and more these totally unnecessary cheap shots to offensive players by using their helmets to deliver the blow. The worst (and most dangerous) happens when a defender launches himself head first into an offensive player and uses his head and helmet as if it is a spear.
This is a fairly recent phenomenon (increasing over the past 5-10 years) and is being copied, unfortunately, at the college and high school levels. Young players are always watching their favorite NFL players and have a tendency to try the same things. Though some of his teammates and many in the stands may momentarily cheer this hit as a sign of so-called manhood by delivering such a blow, I find it quite ironic that you will then notice some of the same players huddled over the injured player to pray for his recovery from the same cheap shot, too.
This is one type of learned behavior that should be ended right now for the good of the game (at all levels), its players, and the fans who would prefer to see a well-played and hard fought game without the increasingly violent and dangerous cheap shots.
Though SwampSwami only played football into early high school back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I was instructed that tackling involved hitting a player with your shoulder pads and, most importantly, wrapping him up down low so his legs can’t go any further. Have football coaches suddenly begun to teach players that tackling a player should involve leaving your feet, flying head first into the offensive player, and then spearing him with your helmet? I doubt it. This is a good way to end the career (and, perhaps, alter the life) for both the person delivering the blow as well as the recipient.
In other words, using your head and helmet to deliver a blow (and/or leaving your feet to do so) is an extremely dangerous and unnecessary part of making a solid tackle. In my opinion, players like Kenny Vaccaro have no place remaining employed in the NFL by making plays like this, and the game would be better off without them.
It is time for the NFL to get serious about head injuries and throw the increasing number of serial cheap shot artists like Vaccaro out of the league for a season (without pay) for the first offense and for good on the next one. You get one chance to learn from your “mistake”, but then you can take your talents somewhere else.
PS – Good luck getting paid $5.67 million in your next job!