I’m not a Minnesota Vikings fan, so this rant has nothing to do with the facemask penalty that wasn’t called against the Los Angeles Rams’ (and former Tennessee Vol) Byron Young near the end of the Rams’ 30-20 win over the Vikes Thursday night.
But replay clearly showed Young not only grabbing the left side of Minnesota quarterback Sam Darnold’s facemask with 1:46 t0 go as Darnold attempted to pass the ball out of his own end zone, but also his head rather obviously jerked, yanked, unscrewed from his neck as Young grabbed hold, eventually throwing Darnold to the ground.
And though two referees were supposed to be watching Darnold at the time of the play, neither somehow saw the infraction.
So they couldn’t call it, at least that’s what Dumb and Dumber said, which meant a safety was called against the Vikes, who were trailing 28-20 before the safety, the two points from the safety resulting in the final score.
So much for protecting the quarterback. So much for instant replay when everyone in the stadium and on television across the universe could see there was a blatant, obvious facemask call. However, it seems a facemask call ISN’T… A… REVIEWABLE… PLAY.
Listen, I’m all for lessening replays, or at least lessening the time spent on them. And a lot of calls are somewhat subjective. Different officials can reach different conclusions on holding, for instance.
But a facemask is pretty obvious and it has the potential to cause serious injury, or at least a severe headache. And we’re living in an era where we’re supposed to be protecting the players more, especially in the head and neck area. So once a facemask violation is detected _ and it almost always is within five seconds or so _ why not have the replay booth signal the officials on the field to throw a flag. It wouldn’t significantly slow the game down _ maybe 60 seconds top _ and it would at least penalize a dangerous play.
But what really needs to change is the repeated helmet-to-helmet hits that are endangering the long-term health of every player who receives them, in many cases becoming a welcome mat for chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which in severe cases _ and there’s currently no way to diagnose it until the patient has died, but it strongly mimics dementia and the patients typically die by 60.
The conventional wisdom through the years is that CTE is tied to concussions, but a 2023 study by Massachusetts General Hospital’s Dr. Daniel Daneshvar and Boston University’s Dr. Jesse Mez suggests that it’s not the number of concussions, but rather the total number of hits that might heighten the threat of CTE.
Which is where the helmet-to-helmet threat and the need to get rid of it come in. If you tune in a college football game this weekend, you’re likely to see at least one targeting call. The NCAA, college coaches and college administrators will swear up and down to you that they want to reduce head hits. That’s why the targeting rule supposedly exists. If a player is found guilty of targeting, he’s removed from the game and must sit out the next half. So if a targeting call against you in the second half stands, you’d be out for the first half of the next game.
But it’s all largely a public relations lie. Just this season they changed the rule to make the part of the helmet that could lead to a targeting call smaller. If it’s anything but the top, or crown of the helmet NO TARGETING.
Are you kidding me? At a time when nearly nine percent of those playing at the college level will suffer at least one concussion this year, when all players, particularly skill position players, receive some blow to the head-neck area at least 10 times a game, you can only get a targeting call if the replay booth determines you hit their helmet with the crown of your helmet. Yeah, I’m sure all those little brain cells that get shaken about like ice cream scoops in a blender while becoming a milkshake are saying to one another, “Oh, we’re good on that midair collision because the ref said that wasn’t targeting. Whoooo!”
The truth is, according to Drs. Daneshvar and Mez, EVERY…SINGLE…BLOW to the head matters.
Or as Dr. Daneshvar noted in a National Institutes for Health article last year: “This study suggests that we could reduce CTE risk through changes to how football players practice and play. If we cut both the number of head impacts and the force of those hits in practice and games, we could lower the odds that athletes develop CTE.”
Which brings me to how to stop this. Penalize all such hits to the head, especially helmet-to-helmet ones, by a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. Unlike targeting, the player could stay in the game, at least for one such penalty. Maybe he could be ejected after two. But the key is to penalize the offending player until coaches start making their players tackle below the neck.
As Dr. Mez noted in this same article, somewhat rebuking the concussion concerns in favor of total blows to the head: “These results provide added evidence that repeated non-concussive head injuries are a major driver of CTE pathology rather than symptomatic concussions.”
It won’t be easy or quick to change a culture among tacklers who instinctively go for the head. Those hits get glorified on social media and sports channels. It’s the way NASCAR wrecks used to drive fan interest in that sport.
As one longtime SEC defensive coach told me one time about not telling his players to hit below the neck, “We want them (the opposition) to know we were there.”
But one can’t help but wonder if these hits are allowed to continue, if either the tackler or the tackled player will know anything years down the road.
(Email Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@mccallie.org)
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