SportsPulse: NFL owners voted on Tuesday to overturn the league's confusing catch rule, but will the new verbiage make a difference? USA TODAY Sports' Mike Jones thinks so. USA TODAY Sports
ORLANDO – As news of the new stricter helmet-to-helmet rule that owners voted to enact broke on Tuesday afternoon, a horde of NFL players expressed displeasure with the change, saying it will now become even more difficult for them to play the game effectively.
According to NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy, “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.”
Although the wording of the rule says all players will have to live by the rule, defensive players said they will suffer the most from the rule, and they worried both that they would be unable to change their approaches and that officials would struggle to enforce the rule effectively and consistently.
“I don’t know how you’re going to play the game,” Washington Redskins cornerback Josh Norman said when reached via telephone. “If your helmet comes in contact? How are you going to avoid that if you’re in the trenches and hit a running back, facemask to facemask and accidentally graze the helmet? It’s obviously going to happen. So, I don’t know even what that definition looks like.”
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Reached via text message, San Francisco 49ers cornerback Richard Sherman said, “It’s ridiculous. Like telling a driver if you touch the lane lines, you’re getting a ticket. (It’s) gonna lead to more lower-extremity injuries.”
Buffalo Bills linebacker Lorenzo Alexander – a 12-year veteran and, like Sherman, a co-vice president on the NFL Players Association's executive committee – agreed.
“It continues to put us in a predicament,” he said in a phone interview. “In our mind, it makes it hard to play defense in this league. In my mind, there needs to be more of a common-sense approach to it. … It is football at the end of the day. There are going to be injuries that you can’t avoid. You can’t legislate everything out.
'I’m a guy that considers myself physical and lays big hits. I’ve never had a helmet-to-helmet hit, but what if I get one next year? And that’s putting onus on a referee and he throws out a star player that impacts a game? I don’t know how that’s going to play. It only takes one time to throw out a Von Miller or Khalil Mack.”
Multiple players expressed concern about split-second decisions, citing an example of a quarterback ducking his head to brace for a hit, and then drawing contact from a pass rusher. They wondered who would be at fault in that case.
The owners are still working to finalize the parameters that could lead to an ejection, and the plan is for coaches and players to be consulted prior to the finalization of the rule in May. But Alexander and several of his peers remain concerned and believe ejections would be unfair.
“Maybe throw a flag on field and review it in booth after game and the panel says it looks like it’s intentional and maybe they vote and you suspend or fine a guy – not heat of the battle,” Alexander suggested. “I think there are better ways to make sure guys aren’t playing that way.”
But he added, “Even when we met with (the competition committee this offseason on this matter), we said coaches are teaching guys to separate the ball from guys and giving pluses in meeting rooms, but then you’re trying to tell me you’re going to throw me out of the game. I’m in a bind here. They need to be a little more creative or and strategic rather than throw something out there that sounds good or looks good from player safety. … Because of (the degenerative brain disease Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy), they feel like they have to do something to show the fans they’re trying to change it. End of the day, it’s football, and if you change the game so much, we’ll eventually have to play something else.”
Norman called it extremely unlikely that players will be able to alter their tackling approaches, even if portions of practice time were devoted to refining techniques.
“It’s not going to do anything. I don’t know any other way to play,” he said. “I understand trying to be safer, I get it. We saw what happened to (Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker) Ryan Shazier, and I get it and understand that, but at the same time, it’s football. I don’t know what other way to say it but it’s football. … I pray for the game and hope it’ll still be what it is, but it seems in our day and age, the game as we know it is coming to an end. But really, we’re all playing the game the way it’s supposed to be played.”
Follow Mike Jones on Twitter @ByMikeJones.
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