More fines for NFL defenders
It’s almost as if league officials don't get any sleep until they have put a fine on someone for something trivial. They had a legitimate concern when they wanted to crack down hard on illegal hits to the head. We understand the head, even while being protected
by a helmet, is no battering-ram. Using your helmet to hit or hitting another person on the head is not a bright idea. We get that, honestly we do. But, it’s just not football until you can hear linemen crashing into each other all the way up in the stands.
It’s a collision sport. If every good play ends with the player getting fined thousands of dollars, we might as well call it Soccer.
The National Football League has slammed two New England Patriots $7,500 each for hits from this Sunday. Of course that is just New England; the total number of players fined this week is higher.
Quarterbacks are the stars among starts of professional football. It’s in the league’s interest to protect them from breaking down on the field. The need is especially intense when the quarterback in question is Brett Favre. Once he was the toughest quarterback
in NFL. You just couldn’t do anything to him that he couldn’t bounce back from within the week. But now, Favre is 41 years old. In the football world that makes him a senior citizen.
Not surprising then that Patriots' defensive lineman, Myron Pryor was fined for knocking out Favre. The best part of it was that the hit appeared to be clean to everyone except the league. Pryor came at Favre and struck him just below the shoulders. That
is how he was supposed to do it. He came straight at him, Favre knew he was coming; he didn’t go for the head but still got fined.
To be fair, Favre did take a serious blow to the chin. He had to be taken off the field and required stitches later. The hit was pretty hard but illegal?
After Pryor made contact with Favre, his momentum obviously didn’t just disappear. Pryor is a really big guy. Favre was knocked back by the hit and Pryor kept moving forward with his momentum. Favre started to lean back by the force of the impact and Pryor
slid along him and crashed into the quarterback below the face mask. It wasn’t intentional. After impact, the players' bodies are thrown in uncontrollable directions. It could have happened on any hit. Holding the defender responsible each time, as is the
current league policy, is just crazy.
In its defence, the league issued a statement saying that the fine was levied for unnecessary roughness. A league spokesman said that a hit to the head and neck area was unnecessary during a pass play. Pryor hit Favre just moments after he released the ball.
Had Pryor been just the slightest bit faster, or Favre slower, it would have been a perfect legal sack. The league can’t expect players to make millisecond decisions while moving at such high speeds and being in such demanding situations. It just is not humanly
possible to stop an instant before impact.
NFL’s Vice President of Officiating until 2009, Mike Pereira holds the opinion that Pryor’s hit was perfectly legitimate. Pryor believes that he was unfairly fined and his agent has said that they would appeal the decision. “You don't mean to hurt somebody,”
Pryor said adding that he didn’t think the hit was severe enough to injure Favre. “But maybe just from the impact going to the ground and from me lying on top of him, that's what made the chin messed up.”
The voices of dissent, who claim that the league is on a path to make football a ‘soft’ sport, would rally for Pryor to get the decision reversed. Removing the kind of hit that Pryor laid on Favre would overall be damaging for the sport.
The fine for linebacker Gary Guyton, also levied for a hit against Favre, made more sense than the one on Pryor. Guyton’s hit drew a helmet to helmet penalty and gave the Vikings their first down on the play. League’s safety concerns and the disciplinary
action it takes to implement the rules are well warranted but let’s try not to go overboard here.
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