Read the debate intro and the arguments from Bleacher Fan and Loyal Homer about the NFL potentially insisting players stay out an entire game after a head injury.
Here is an obvious, but important statement: NFL players have a job where they get hit a lot. Sometimes those hits happen in the head. Because of the enduring physical risk NFL players undertake to play football, in part, they receive salaries that many deem excessive. But, this is a job for only a certain time in a person’s life. It is not wrong and selfish for a player to remove themselves from a game because of trouble shaking a concussion. And if the NFL’s embedded locker room culture dictates masking head injuries, the NFL must step up its treatment of injuries that have long-term impact on a person’s post-football career. Loyal Homer is correct – the NFL must protect its players, and one game is not a major sacrifice.
The NFL currently has a retirement plan. That retirement plan has been attacked by 25 different federal lawsuits within the past 10 years. The content of those majority of the lawsuits has involved (you guessed it) disability determinations. In other words, a lot of smart people think the NFL does not do a good enough job taking care of its players when their careers are over, and including a mandatory extra one game out of the lineup for a player who suffers a head injury on the field of play is not just good policy. It simply makes sense.
The lawsuit examples indicate that the NFL already does not do enough to protect the long-term health of its players, though it does profit from their health in the near term. The NFL is – because of the way the game is played and the culture that is permitted within the league – obligated to take care of its players because so many long-term health issues result from playing the game hard.
It is hard to question a player like Hines Ward. Ward is a champion – two times over, to be exact – so he knows what it takes to win. He knows the effort and sacrifice required to attain success at the highest level. When he told NBC, “It’s tough… you don’t want to jeopardize your future. It’s a tossup. You either play and jeopardize your future, or you sit out and worry about the big picture.” The players are conflicted, so the NFL must intervene on behalf of a player’s long-term health. If a player makes his own decision to hold himself out of the lineup he is perceived as weak. However, if he plays and suffers a substantial injury because of the existing one he denied, he is permanently weak. The NFL can and should mediate.
From a business investment stand point it is worth a team’s while to lose a player for a single game over the course of the player’s contract when compared against the possibility of losing the player to injury for their entire career.
Whether it is the competitive nature of the player, as Loyal Homer points out, or the general culture that exists within the league, a person playing with a head injury is a risky thing to do. For fans it is easy to view the players as just that – players. They are business assets with a certain job to do. They are not allowed to make errors, and they are not allowed to succumb to injuries that are unseen by the eye. Fans are wrong in this view, and, strangely, agents are correct. A player’s agent must see a player as a person, with long-term plans, family (or families if you’re Travis Henry), other business interests, etc. Fans sometimes forget that players are people, and this concussion rule is a healthy reminder.
A fight from owners and some league insiders on this issue makes no sense. Why? If a team is unable to go one week without a certain player, then the owner, GM, and coaching staff is not doing a good enough job. The roster may lack depth, the coach is not using players well enough, or the owner has hired the wrong people in key positions. The Colts, in Bleacher Fan’s example, should have a better quarterback playing behind Manning. Fighting over greater protection for players who suffer injuries that science has not fully grasped yet makes no sense.
Bleacher Fan made some interesting points. However, the degree of injury – and the level of scientific understanding about a given injury – is extremely important. Bleacher Fan is also right about the difference between being hurt and being injured. However, head injuries need a different classification. The league must evolve to protect.
Bleacher Fan also mentions that a player’s perception of an injury (life-threatening versus non-life-threatening) impacts a team’s culture. I agree. But when the NFL imposes greater protections for injured players – even though the non-doctor teammates are unable to identify the appearance of an injury – it is changing the perception of the injury. Head injuries are not to be taken lightly anymore. By imposing this “extra day off” rule the NFL is forcing the perception of head injuries to change and shifting the league’s culture. That’s a good thing. While this potential rule is not designed to protect all players from all injuries, it is a positive precedent for the long-term health and viability of the NFL and its human employees.
Posted by Sports Geek 
