The film of Houston Texans quarterback Tom Savage after he was hit, shuddering on the ground with those stiff outstretched arms and slow-twitching fingers, should be accompanied by dense fog, scuttling leaves and screeching music in diminished chords.
You tell yourself it's just football, and not hatchet cinema, but that makes it only scarier. It's hard to drag your attention away from that fright-flick moment, and Savage's trembling. But his injury needs to be studied from both the before and after standpoint.
There are two angles from which to consider that replay, and two groups that are responsible for analyzing it. The NFL league office and the NFL Player's Association are conducting a joint investigation into how Savage's injury was handled on the sideline. All of the focus at the moment is on the hot-button issue of whether the league is making a farce of concussion protocols. But an equally important issue is how Savage got hit in the first place, and the union has some considering to do on that one, because protection issues don't start in the medical tent. They start with labor's unreasonable restrictions of off-season workouts, which actually may be doing more harm than good, because they have led to poorer protection for pocket quarterbacks such as Savage.
Pretty soon, the NFL is going to become one of those tales in which people keep disappearing, one by one, like Agatha Christie's plot in "And Then There Were None." The toll of violence has deprived the league of headliner after headliner: Ten quarterbacks are out for the season, including a half-dozen faces of their franchises, and then there are the ones trying to hobble through, such as the Oakland Raiders' Derek Carr with a fractured back, and the Seattle Seahawks' Russell Wilson nursing a re-set jaw. Ratings are down seven percent, which should give both management and the union incentive to ask, what can we do to keep our best-selling QB jerseys on the field?
Every injury is different, of course, and there is no way to legislate safety in the face of the simple physics of ever bigger men running at each other ever faster. No rule or protocol could have preserved the Philadelphia Eagles' MVP candidate Carson Wentz, who decided to ram his 6-foot-5, 237 pounds through two Los Angeles Rams defenders at the goal line like a log through a sawmill, and came away with a blown knee.
But some things are addressable, particularly when it comes to quarterbacks, the most important players on the field, and often the most defenseless. This is not to let the league off the hook for the obvious fact that certain clubs are skipping lily pad-like over concussion evaluations. Players are returning to the field after answering a couple of brisk questions, despite clear evidence of severe blows to the head. Wilson missed just one play after taking a hit that left him on a liquid diet. Savage spent an estimated three minutes being appraised before someone let him back on the field. That's way too quick for symptoms to manifest, and everyone knows it. The league office is ever-eager to issue fines and suspensions to a player for an illegal hit. But it has yet to issue a single meaningful public rebuke to anyone wearing a suit -- a doctor, trainer, or club official -- for jeopardizing player health.
The union was well-intentioned when it bargained for a longer offseason in 2011: The idea was to preserve bodies and forbid clubs from working players into the ground. But expert observers say there has been a marked deterioration in the quality of line play.
From Jan. 2 to mid-April, coaches can't even talk to players about football. From April to July, activities are ludicrously circumscribed: two weeks of weights only, three weeks of individual drills, four weeks of highly limited no-contact practices.
In other words, no blocking. Pretty much ever.
So much about the NFL's injury problem is incurable. But this is something that can be done. Every offseason the league and union look anew at issues ranging from field conditions to helmets. They should consider a compromise on workout restrictions for first- and second-year players, so they can "develop their hands and feet and technique, and to get the reps in to be functional when they get in the game," former Indianapolis Colts vice chairman Bill Polian said. This seems like mere common sense: Protection starts in the preseason, not in the concussion protocol.
Sports on 12/13/2017