At this point, there are no more illusions when it comes to the violence of the NFL. Despite Jerry Jones’ delusions, the NFL has been forced to acknowledge what the public has known for years — that football is unsafe at a basic level for its players’ brains. Yet because Commissioner Roger Goodell wishes to connect the NFL with white-picket-fence morality, they’ve backed themselves into a position where they can’t simply just acknowledge an evil inherent to the game — they have to do something about it.
That’s why, at the NFL owners meetings on Wednesday, the league announced that for a one-year trial touchbacks will place the ball at the 25-yard line rather than the 20. The goal is to increase the incentive for teams to take touchbacks by making them more beneficial, thus further eliminating what is largely considered the type of play most likely to cause traumatic brain and spinal injuries.
At ESPN’s coverage of the meetings, Sal Paolantonio said on Sportscenter that injuries on kick returns increased in 2015 from years past. It’s all well and good that the NFL shows it’s so gravely concerned about the safety and moral uprightness of its players (it also instituted automatic ejections for two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties in a game), but word around the league is they might be doing more harm than good.
New touchback rules means we're going to see a lot of high kicks landing inside the 10 yard line.
— Matt Miller (@nfldraftscout) March 23, 2016
Text from one ST coach on touchback rule: "There'll def be more high, short kicks and squib kicks." Expects more creativity to pin teams.
— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) March 23, 2016
New touchback rule, meet Law of Unintended Consequences. Law of Unintended Consequences, new touchback rule.
— Mike Tanier (@MikeTanier) March 23, 2016
NFL owners passed the new touchback rule thinking there will be fewer kickoff returns. I sense special teams coaches expect more returns.
— Michael David Smith (@MichaelDavSmith) March 23, 2016
The logic behind this is simple, and it’s the same problem that was thrown in stark relief when Bountygate happened to the Saints — for all the league’s talk, the people who coach and play the game are still under a mandate to do everything in their power to win the game. Until recently, the sentiment behind Gregg Williams’ infamous “Kill the head, and the body will die” speech wasn’t terribly out of the ordinary. Even though the same rule change did in fact increase the number of touchbacks in the NCAA, league insiders believe NFL kickers are skilled enough to plant the ball just outside the goal line with the goal of pinning teams behind the 25.
Unlike in most cases where Roger Goodell’s league office has made a mistake attempting to protect the NFL’s image, it’s hard to castigate him or the competition committee for overlooking a potential effect like this, especially since we haven’t yet seen it come to pass. Maybe kickers won’t be able to get the ball high enough consistently to make such a strategy worth it, after all. But if the NFL has indeed gotten this wrong and in fact encouraged more potentially brain-damaging kick returns, it will be yet another example of the league’s inability to legislate violence out of its own nature. And each time that happens, it further erodes the moral credibility which Goodell has struggled so mightily to establish.
