NFL franchise owners approve points of emphasis for next season-NFL News
The owners of the National Football League (NFL) franchises have voted approval of the league’s competition committee’s recommended list of ‘points of emphasis’.
Almost all of the points relate to the players’ on-field safety and promotion of injury-free playing environment.
Some of those points include blows to the head, horse-collar tackles and taunting, which, according to the league office, will remain under strict review of the team’s officials during each game.
A meeting of the owners held with the NFL’s commissioner, Roger Goodell, in chair expressed the need for re-emphasis of those points to make sure their effective implementation.
The competition committee watched a video of blows to heads from different offensive and defensive linemen and noted an increase in the incidents.
It pertinently noted that striking, swinging or clubbing in the head or area around the neck are already banned and recommended for reinstruction of the team officials to ensure implementation of these measures.
The rise in the horse-collar tackles has particularly raised concerns and the meeting decided to make examples as a part of a video to be shown to all players at the training camp to sensitise them on the issue.
All these points of emphasis are in addition to the league’s expressive commitment towards the promotion of on-field safety and security of the players.
The issue of players’ safety also remained at forefront of the NFL owners’ meeting and all the members of the owners’ competition committee held prolonged discussions on different aspects of the players’ injuries.
It is to note here that the league office has come under fire recently over its concussion policies.
The office has severely been criticised over controversial handling of concussion of Cleveland Browns’ quarterback, Colt McCoy, who suffered the injury in later part of the 2011 NFL season.
McCoy was allowed to resume his game without being inspected for the head injury on the sidelines and following a wave of criticism, the league office initiated an inquiry into Browns’ facilities at Cleveland.
The team successfully avoided the possibility of a penalty despite that the inquiry had found a system failure at Browns.
Separately, the league office is engaged in a legal battle waged by its former players. All the complainants have criticised NFL’s concussion policies and are demanding compensation of their sufferings, which, they said, were increased due to the policies.
The NFL has denied all the accusations in the respective lawsuits and reiterated the stance again at the owners meeting.
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