The Glade 4.0

or maybe flag football... or maybe they should just adopt lingerie football rules?

It's hard game played by hard men (who make millions of dollars).

If you aren't willing to accept the risk of a jelly brain, don't play.

Kam Chancellor was flagged, will likely be fined (but hopefully not suspended) for this hit on Vernon Davis last night.



Everything about that hit is textbook (and legal). He hit him with his shoulder, in the chest area (arm/football actually), and his feet never left the ground.

According to post game interviews, Chancellor was told he was flagged for 'launching' at the player, but the video clearly shows he had his feet on the ground when he made contact.

Here is a screencap of the impact.



And here is slow motion video

Violent, yes. Illegal? bah...



Edit:

Images and video taken from [ur=http://blacksportsonline.com/home/2012/12/seahawks-kam-chancellor-legal-hit-on-49ers-vernon-davis-video/]this link[/url]...

I know right. The officiating wasn't very good last night.

But eh, when is it ever.

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Holy shitsnacks!

The officiating sucked and so did Kaepernick and the Niners defense.

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"Said I never had much use for one, never said I didn't know how to use one!"~ Matthew Quigley

"nothing like a little meow in bed at night" ~ Bruskey

"I gotta float my stick same as you" Hondo Lane

"Fill your hand you son of a *****!"

Midgen, you never struck me as the sort of person who would demand to see other human beings suffer traumatic brain injuries for your own entertainment.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Blatant, helmet to helmet impact? Sure, flag it.

Clean, hard hit to the chestal area with a shoulder? No flag.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Rynar, stop being a troll. Do you have something to contribute?

The players are there of their own free will. No one is making them do it.

It's no different than professional fighters of any kind, race car drivers, free climbers, base jumpers, etc...

They expose themselves to permanent injury or death every time they compete. They understand what they are doing and accept the risk.

The only reason the NFL is changing these rules is because they are getting sued by players who claimed they didn't understand the risk of brain injury.

Ok, fine... Those days are over. The risk is known. Sign a waiver, and compete, and pack your **** and go home.

I'm hardly trolling you. The reality is that it's their game, not yours, and the players are a non-fungible commodity. If the league and players union decide the best way to protect the brand, product, and athletes is to make the game less violent your only choice is whether or not to purchase it.

The truth of the matter is that unless the game makes player saftey it's highest priority the game will be completely gone in a generation or two as lawsuits destroy the NFL's feeder pools.

And, given your over-the-top reaction, my first post in this thread was spot on.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

It's interesting to think that these might be the same arguments we saw over 100 years ago, when people died playing football. 19 players died in 1905, and another 11 in the next two years. And, this is just collegiate football, with far fewer players than today. I was doing research in the sports sections of Texas newspapers from the 1930s, and came across an item that talked about the "first" death of the season ...

I'm sure folks back then also bemoaned the changes, but the point is, the game needs to change as society and players' physical abilities (and equipment) also change. There's a reason many players are raising the league's lack of attention to the issue of concussions (and player pensions, too, right?).

(Actually, I'm one of the people bemoaning the move to eliminate kickoffs. I love kickoffs, they're the best part of the game. But they do seem to represent a disproportionate number of injuries.)

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This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

They made the flying wedge illegal (1894) after too many people received serious injuries from the team using this tried and true military tactic. Various tactics using similar concepts have also been banned over the years. It is traditional for the NFL and its predecessors to ban dangerous practices. Who are we to argue with this long standing tradition?

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

No, not spot on.

It's understandable that player safety needs to be the league's top priority but there comes a point when the rules are so onerous and cumbersome, they begin to interfere with the actual game. Every week I see at least one big play called back and a drive stopped due to a questionable call that was a legitimate play on the ball. Losing players to attrition is one way the league can lose viewership but it also needs to bear in mind that people are playing to watch athletes compete not watch the refs run a game.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Help me out here guys.

By the current rules, the play Kam Chancellor made was completely legal. No helmet/head/neck, he didn't leave his feet.

Almost every knowledgeable analyst called that a textbook hit. He broke up the pass, by hitting him in the chest with his shoulder. How can you do it any better?

How would you change to rules to prevent concussions like the one Vernon Davis experienced here?

There was another play in this game where Leroy Hill hit Mario Manningham in the lower leg resulting in a season ending knee injury. Hill stated after the game that he had no intention of injuring the guy, but that he was so conscientious of an upper body/head/neck hit, that he thought he was playing it safe by going low. I believe Ed Reed made a similar comment recently (he's more inclined to go low to avoid penalties and fines). It will be interesting to see how the statistics look in regards to lower leg injuries vs head injuries as these rule changes take effect.

Oh I agree Midgen. It was a textbook hit, the officiating was bad, and if KC gets fined for it he heeds to appeal.

Football is a violent game. Rugby even more so. Hockey is famed for its fights. Even basketball and baseball have their brawls. You can't make them totally safe, so you make them as safe as reasonably possible and people never agree where that line is.

Then of course you get to martial arts, and to mixed martial arts. Sports is a dangerous business. It also makes a expletive ton of money. Sports are not going to go away so they need to keep balancing the danger and violence against how to play the game.

It will never make everyone happy. This is why we have conversations like this.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

And this isn't the only time this has happend this season. Just a few weeks ago Mike & Mike were going on about a similar play. Golic had huge rant about it. I forget which game but the DB made a clean, by the book, new rules and all, powerful jarring hit against a WR and was flagged for it. Basically it's come down to "if it looks bad, just throw the flag".

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

Gridiron football is a violent game, for violent men. In his '46 "Green Bay Packers" book, Arch Ward wrote an account of the 1919 Packers @ Ishpeming game. I'll grab it off my shelf when I get home and type up an excerpt, but the gist of it is that by the half, more than a handful of Green Bay players were on the sideline with missing teeth, broken ribs, etc... Don't get me wrong, I love the high-flying antics of the passing game as much as the next guy, our passing game eventually won out in that game, and it was our Hutson that is a template for the modern wide receiver; but there's just something special about grinding bones to dust in the mud. Watch the old tape of Lombardi's "Packer Sweep" - hundreds of pounds of mass being flung aside by pure crystallized, synchronized human effort and sheer willpower... it's poetry in motion.

I understand that as a league, we are facing litigation on various fronts, including the forerunner - the concussion lawsuit. I truly hope it gets thrown out, and we see the kid gloves come back off of the game. Do I think that'll happen? Probably not. Can I dream? Absolutely.

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But the difference, as I alluded to in my post, is equipment. Rugby - and, correct me if I'm wrong - is basically the same game as 150 years ago. American football, meanwhile, has developed hand-in-hand with better equipment and improved physical development of the players. When physical development (heck, and scouting) is combined with better equipment ... you get life-threatening injuries and lawsuits. Would "KC" have done that hit if he didn't have a full face-mask and lightweight, full-body armor? Perhaps, but he may have paid a bigger price than just a fine and/or a suspension.

_________________
This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

Not really, seeing as how the hit was legal under the current rules. That's pretty much all there is to it.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

No one?

Mandate mouthguards and concussion reducing helmets as a first step.

Other than that, I don't know what else there is to do. I'm not a doctor.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Yeah if I were truly interested in player safety I'd be looking at equipment. I might also consider a weight range system on a per position basis that would be similar to boxing.

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Some would argue that the improved safety equipment is part of the problem.

In fact a few years ago, Mike Ditka went so far as to suggest removing face masks to prevent people from leading with their foreheads.

With the improved safety gear, the hitter is free to hit much harder without suffering his own injuries...

Edit: And better helmets wouldn't have helped Vernon Davis. His head never contacted anything during the play. In fact looking at the video, it might very well have been his impact with the ground that caused his concussion, and not Chancellors hit to his chest. It was similar to the brain sloshing head injuries people get in car crashes. Just the sudden change of direction causing the brain to impact the inside of the cranium.

Here is a link
Acceleration-Deceleration Sport-Related Concussion: The Gravity of It All

You called my response 'over the top' after saying this?

There is no argument that the hit with the ground is what caused the concussion.

Helmets absolutely make a difference:
http://cowboysblog.dallasnews.com/2011/ ... l-ha.html/



And he hasn't suffered a concussion since he made the switch to Schutt in the 2010 season. Nor to the best of my knowledge have the other players confirmed to be wearing their helmets:

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From my twitter feed this AM...

Spoilered for language

So the refs messed up a call, big whoop. Unless there's evidence that the refs knew there was no head contact on the hit but threw the flag anyway, all we have is a bad call on a hit that happened in a fraction of a second. The refs screw up calls like that all the time, it's just part of the game. The refs also miss plenty of helmet to helmet hits, but I don't take that as evidence that the NFL is becoming a violent, dangerous sport where the refs ignore the rules at the expense of the players' health.