Aaron Hernandez Found to Have Severe C.T.E.

[seafoam1 1,879]

 

And what I'm saying is that, unless all of the NFL players currently playing just quit, you would have a bloodbath on your hands before anyone adjusted.

 

I mean, seriously consider this. Say you made the switch to leather helmets this coming Tuesday. What's Thursday going to look like? Or Sunday? Say you decide to make the switch in the off-season. What's the first full-contact practice going to look like?

Sure, after you have hospitals full of paralyzed players and teams down to 15 or so healthy guys, maybe you'll have something going there

 

It's like saying that we could reduce handgun accidents by removing safeties from guns, thus forcing everyone to treat them more carefully. Perhaps people could learn...but while they are learning, thousands and thousands would be getting shot.

 

 

This leather helmet thing has been a popular notion for a long time. I remember my dad saying the same thing when we were watching a game when I was back in college. It's not a new idea. And if you could wave a magic wand and instantly change everyone's behavior, it might even work. Plenty of ideas are great if only magic was possible But it's an idea that could never be actually implemented without horrible results.

Honestly I dont think players learned to lead with their helmets from the age of 4. And I dont think any of them formally learned it if they are currently playing now.

 

Its a players choice to do it today.

 

Anyway, if leather is used, once they realize the stakes against themselves, they will stop quickly. The league is dirty, but if each player knows a dirty hit could hurt themselves, they will stop.

And if they dont, then it's their problem if they get hurt.

 

And I will add that there needs to be something done if this is as bad as you say.

 

Seriously would you rather string this out over years or fix it? And by fixing I mean not letting the guys who cant control themselves on the field to be the focus of the lack of solution?

 

Anyway, do we even know if leather would change anything? There were no studies about leather helmet guys after their death were there?

[brotherbock 349]

 

Anyway, do we even know if leather would change anything? There were no studies about leather helmet guys after their death were there?

 

This is a really solid point. The assumption behind the leather helmet thing is based on anecdotal evidence that guys 'back in the day' weren't getting hurt this bad. So the idea is that if we go back to those days and that equipment, guys again won't get hurt as bad.

 

So one point you just made: how do we know guys weren't getting hurt so bad? Where's the data? The world wasn't watching those guys with a microscope 24/7.

 

Second point: one huge difference between then and now is the size and speed of the players. Check this out: http://megadeluxe.com/sports/green-bay-packers-offensive-lines-weight-comparison. The offensive linemen for the 2010 Packers weighed an average 68 pounds more than the linemen for the 67 Packers. 68 pounds. In the 1987 Combine (first year of combine stats I could find) three guys ran under a 4.40. Seven in 2017, with another 3 hitting right at 4.40. And by then we're well well well past the leather helmet days.

 

The league was an entirely different place. Smaller guys running slower and hitting a lot less hard. Much more running in the trenches where you don't get up to full speed, a lot less passing and guys colliding head-on at full gas.

 

I see no reason to think that leather helmets would even help in the way people are saying, even if you made it past the initial adjustment phase. You'd have to teach them all to run slower and stop lifting so much weight.

 

 

And again, I'll say it: people do not adapt that quickly to changes in their reflexes. We're not talking about helmet-to-helmet hits, and definitely no restricting it to leading with the helmet. Even when no flags are thrown, guys are getting hit in the helmet all the time, on perfectly legal tackles. It's that constant pounding that's contributing just as much as helmet shots. A knee to the helmet, for example. And yeah, I know for a fact that there are youth coaches out there teaching kids to tackle without paying attention to whether they are leading with the helmet or not.

 

So again, take a kid who's been playing since 4th grade, who's been taught how to play the game at top speed, to tackle in a certain way. He gets his skills refined by coaching, of course. But most of these guys in the NFL are not the types that had to be sat down and 'retrained' at any point. They keep building on what they know. So a kid goes from 9 to 29 playing football one way. 20 years. And you're going to train all of that out of him quickly enough that he doesn't tackle someone 'the old way' by reflex and kill himself? Not gonna happen.

 

So yeah, the guys who can't adapt can stop playing. As I said, you'd have NFL teams of 10 players or so. Because most won't be able to adapt. Not after that many years of training.

[WR Guru 31]

The leather helmet thing is silly. Players are bigger and faster now by orders of magnitude. We'd go from talking about concussions to talking about on-field fatalities.

 

You want to get serious:

--Ban the sport at youth levels until players reach an age when they are capable of making informed consent (18?). Bye bye high school football.

--Shorten the seasons and games at all levels to at least reduce players' lifetime exposure to hits.

 

Other than that, there is not much to do here short of outlawing the sport entirely.

[brotherbock 349]

The leather helmet thing is silly. Players are bigger and faster now by orders of magnitude. We'd go from talking about concussions to talking about on-field fatalities.

 

 

Thank you.

[seafoam1 1,879]

You know what? Screw this whole thing. There are millions if people out there smokibg and drinking heavy risking cancer and/or severe liver damage. And they are footing the bill for this. Except for maybe insurance.

 

CTE to most players means nothing as they are getting paid well to do it and they love the attention.

 

Keep the helmets on and issue a warning. Eval Kneival (however you spell his name), continued to break bones and scramble his brain for all the money and desire. So is Jordan Reed and others in the NFL.

 

Im just going to play fantasy football and enjoy it.

[brotherbock 349]

And they are footing the bill for this. Except for maybe insurance.

 

 

 

And the cigarette and alcohol companies. Those fockers get sued all the time.

 

Marketing works, on all of us. We aren't rational paragons who make the best decisions for ourselves based on reason and evidence and analysis. We, all of us, fall prey to marketing with almost every purchase we make. If you think you're an exception, you're not. The libertarian Henry David Thoreau notion of a man unaffected by his surroundings and being perfectly in charge of himself is a crock of crap. Corporations spend billions and billions of dollars successfully influencing our behavior. Consumers, and employees. That includes the NFL, influencing people to play the sport by constantly downplaying the danger. The fact is the vast majority of people do not know the real risks. Grab someone off the street and ask them about football and CTEs. They'll think you're talking about some statistic. They know 'concussion'. They don't know CTE. That includes most of the little kids playing Pop Warner. They are uninformed.

 

But you're right--for you and I (I have no kids), the options are simple. I won't be able to change anything, my nephews got out of the sport (into soccer, where they'll only pretend to have horrible injuries from what they'll pretend is a hard hit ), so I'm going to keep playing FF for now. I got my bell wrung enough in martial arts, I certainly won't be taking up football. It's a problem I'm interested in, but I have almost zero influence on the outcome.

[seafoam1 1,879]

 

And the cigarette and alcohol companies. Those fockers get sued all the time.

 

Marketing works.

I take responsibility if I abuse alcohol, non perscription drugs, cigarettes, illegal activities, and others. Suing others is out of hand these days for people who claim ignorance or weakness.

 

haha, and I have had my moments and was never blaming others for my actions or pretended I was only an inoccent kid doing nothing wrong.

[brotherbock 349]

I take responsibility if I abuse alcohol, non perscription drugs, cigarettes, illegal activities, and others. Suing others is out of hand these days for people who claim ignorance or weakness.

 

haha, and I have had my moments and was never blaming others for my actions or pretended I was only an inoccent kid doing nothing wrong.

 

There's no good line to draw between what others are responsible for doing to us, and what they aren't.

 

I've done a lot of stupid sh!t, have never sued anyone either. But I've had a lot of privilege compared to a lot of other people. If I had been deceived by cigarette companies for decades into thinking their product was good for me, I'd sue the fock out of them It's a sliding scale. You're right that we sue too much in this country. But that doesn't mean it's not warranted sometimes. Lots of horrible people in the corporate world doing lots of horrible things to other people for money. Many of them deserve to be sued.

[IMMensaMind 459]

No, they wouldn't.

 

Do you actually think that these guys could "instantly" retrain reflexes they have been training since the 4th grade, so that in a split-second on the field, playing at full speed, they'd be able to change behavior they have been learning for the majority of their lives?

 

Making a tackle isn't an instance of constructing a logical argument and formulating a careful plan based on cost-benefit analysis. It's reacting much more than it is acting. Again, a lifetime of training. And you think they can just 'undo' that? Before a ton of them get seriously hurt? That's ridiculous.

Disagree. You know when you have a helmet on, and when you don't. There is an instant feeling of vulnerability when it is off; witness what happens when a player has their helmet knocked off right in game action.

[Patriotsfatboy1 1,432]

 

So again, take a kid who's been playing since 4th grade, who's been taught how to play the game at top speed, to tackle in a certain way. He gets his skills refined by coaching, of course. But most of these guys in the NFL are not the types that had to be sat down and 'retrained' at any point. They keep building on what they know. So a kid goes from 9 to 29 playing football one way. 20 years. And you're going to train all of that out of him quickly enough that he doesn't tackle someone 'the old way' by reflex and kill himself? Not gonna happen.

 

So yeah, the guys who can't adapt can stop playing. As I said, you'd have NFL teams of 10 players or so. Because most won't be able to adapt. Not after that many years of training.

 

Those players do get retrained on technique at each level. High School coaches undo what youth coaches have done. College coaches undo what HS coaches do (or they recruit kids from HS who teach it similarly). Pro coaches undo what college coaches do (or they draft kids from programs that they know need less retraining).

 

Look at the Seattle Seahawks. They provide the de-facto manual for tackling that is used by many youth programs and is being adopted in lots of other programs. It is rugby-style tackling where the defender's head is taken out of the tackle and the emphasis is on shoulder tackling. They have their players repping this method during the offseason and in preseason.

[jgcrawfish 232]

Disagree. You know when you have a helmet on, and when you don't. There is an instant feeling of vulnerability when it is off; witness what happens when a player has their helmet knocked off right in game action.

 

That's true for almost everybody except this guy:

 

 

[TheUsualSuspect 207]

Eval Kneival (however you spell his name), continued to break bones and scramble his brain for all the money and desire. So is Jordan Reed and others in the NFL.

Im just going to play fantasy football and enjoy it.

Let's all agree, that Evel Knievel > Jordan Reed.

[brotherbock 349]

Let's all agree, that Evel Knievel > Jordan Reed.

 

I would totally take Evel Knievel in round 1. First half of round 1, even. Injury history and everything.

[jgcrawfish 232]

Let's all agree, that Evel Knievel > Jordan Reed.

Fock, you're talking about GOAT vs ???? Give me Knievel all day long and twice on Sundays!

[seafoam1 1,879]

Let's all agree, that Evel Knievel > Jordan Reed.

Knievel is more in the Walter Payton tier.

[huskyhater75 242]

So what.................his family will sue, the players union will back them up, and they'll most likely get a pile of money for raising a disrespectful POS. The way the NFL is right now with these crap-for-brains not standing for the National Anthem, I can see me and my friends playing NCAA fantasy football within a few years...........to hell with these spoiled thugs.