Why the NFL Hasn't Taken Any Real Steps Toward Player Safety

The NFL is deadly serious about making you think they're serious about player safety.

In 2010, the league office released a new set of safety standards outlawing dangerous plays, such as attempting a tackle on a "runner already in the grasp of a tackler and whose forward progress has been stopped."

The legal boilerplate describing exactly what is legal and what is not is tough to decipher on an NFL football field, so the league put up posters like these in every NFL locker room:

Unfortunately, according to Vikings punter Chris Kluwe, the enforcement of these rules looks a little more like this:

The reality is, the NFL can't make football safe by legislating technique. The NFL's tackle stats still aren't official because half the time the scorer can't even tell who made the tackle at full speed. Officials on the field can't hope to consistently enforce such labyrinthine rules at the speed of the NFL.

Even players who take the time to get things right get it wrong. In an AFC North matchup back in December, Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison saw Cleveland Browns quarterback Colt McCoy tuck the ball under his arm and run. Harrison knew McCoy was now legally considered a "protected runner" and the special protections granted to quarterbacks didn't apply.

So Harrison blew McCoy up:

Unfortunately for Harrison, the league didn't agree. As CBSSports.com's Ryan Wilson wrote, "The NFL determined that the hit was illegal because even though McCoy had tucked the ball to run, and had taken five steps before deciding at the last second to throw the ball, he's still considered a quarterback and afforded the rules that protect them."

Either way, leading with the crown of your helmet isn't allowed, regardless of technical protection status. Though the flagged infraction wasn't a "helmet-to-helmet hit," the helmet-to-helmet contact was what got Harrison in hot water. Again. 

The kicker is that a result of the hit, McCoy got a severe concussion which Browns doctors blithely ignored.

It seems as though the NFL hasn't come very far from the days of George Visger.

Visger was a defensive tackle for the San Francisco 49ers in 1980 and 1981. In his rookie season, Visger suffered a severe concussion against the Dallas Cowboys, and 49ers trainers administered smelling salts 20 times to keep him on the field throughout that contest.

Visger suffered so much repeated head trauma in his 2.5 NFL seasons he developed hydrocephalus, or "water on the brain." After nine surgeries to shunt away the excess fluid, some during his playing career, Visger still carries a "brain drain kit" in case he's about to slip into a coma.

Despite successfully suing the 49ers for workman's comp and qualifying for Social Security disability, Visger still does not qualify for NFL long-term benefits, due to his short career—shortened, ironically, by the injuries he suffered that haunt him to this day.

According to USA Today, the NFL is a defendant in more than 20 lawsuits filed by about 300 former players. The measures that the league enacted is supposed to prevent this generation of Colt McCoys from turning into another generation of George Visgers. But the head being a few inches higher isn't going to fundamentally change the game.

The most dramatic trend in the NFL is the shift to pass-first offenses, where quarterbacks like Drew Brees, Tom Brady and Matthew Stafford throw the ball 40 to 50 times a game to a phalanx of targets. Modern offenses are stretching the field both horizontally and vertically, and the old-school "phone booth" play just doesn't cut it anymore.

As a response, defenses are shifting more to exotic blitz schemes and dominant defensive lines, trying to pressure the quarterback. Behind them, defenses are playing more soft zones out of nickel and dime alignments.

The idea? Pressure the quarterback at all costs, and make sure you don't get burned if your pressure doesn't hit home. The problem? Instead of conventional wrap-up tackles from close range, zone defenders are flying across the field to pop receivers with flying shoulder or helmet.

That's right, the shift from "black and blue" to "air and space" actually encourages high-velocity shoulder- and helmet-to-helmet hits. Many football fans decry the lost art of tackling, but Jack Lambert didn't have to close down a seven-yard gap on Rob Gronkowski and bring him down with one hit.

With the size and speed of today's players, and modern coaching emphasis on using the whole field, collisions are simply going to be violent—perhaps too violent to be safe, regardless of technique.

As more becomes known about the plight of former players, and conditions like chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the plainer it will become that football, as it is, is fundamentally unsafe. There may have to be real changes made in the structure of the game itself.

Just as special teams is fundamentally changing—the elimination of the wedge, the moving up of kickoffs—for safety's sake, offensive and defensive alignments and strategies may have to be outlawed. The end result may be less fun to watch, but more fun to watch than Colt McCoy laid out senseless on the turf.