This will go down as one of the most trying times in NFL history. In light of the horrible tragedy that occurred to Bills safety Damar Hamlin, Roger Goodell, the league office, and the NFL itself is facing an unprecedented challenge of scheduling and player safety as the league season whines to a close.
I’m going to keep this article as brief as possible as the health and safety of Damar Hamlin is the only thing that should be on anyone’s mind at the moment, but it’s also true that the NFL is under a lot of pressure with how they handle things going forward.
This situation was the worst possible thing that could have happened to the NFL and the league office…if you look at it from their cynical perspectives. Having to pay out a billion dollars to sick, traumatized, and neuralgically damaged ex-players is costly and bad for PR, but those players don’t have an affiliation with the league and can’t impact the on-field performance and subsequent ad-revenue performance for the televised games.
I hate to have to say this but it’s a fact that the NFL wouldn’t give a damn about the CTE-stricken ex-players if they hadn’t brought a massive lawsuit against the company that forced the ever-so precious advertisers to think twice about placing their ads on the games. And any hit to the NFL’s multi-billion-dollar line is unacceptable in the eyes of the league office and commissioner.
If they did care about the players health, then they would have made safer helmets and rules years ago.
Unfortunately, the players are just commodities in the eyes of many of the NFL’s executives, league officers, owners, etc., and will be treated as such. It’s an awful truth, but a necessary one to know in order to fully grasp the severity of the situation the NFL now faces.
A player nearly died in front of millions because he was playing the sport of football under the NFL brand, and now the public, rightfully, demands accountability and change.
The only issue is that the NFL can’t change any of its rules over this hit as the play was one of the most common and “mundane” collisions in the sport. There must be several thousand hits like the one we saw between Hamlin and Tee Higgins occur every week in the NFL across all 16 games and the 32 participating teams, resulting in close to 50,000 of these tackles every season. Under normal circumstances, it was a routine hit.
Thus, due to the very violent nature of the sport, it’s an unfortunate reality that players and athletes are going to get really hurt on a rather frequent basis. However, there’s nothing the NFL can do to prevent these types of tragic incidents without altering the very foundation of the sport.
Now, that’s a conversation for another day, but the fact is that the only thing the NFL can do to stop similar incidents is to pray. Yes, I may sound incredulous and sarcastic, but I’m not trying to be as it is the truth. Of course, the NFL may want to invest in safer equipment with more “padding/armor” to stop the concussive blow from a tackle that can stop a human’s heart, but that will obviously slow down the pace of the game.
Essentially, if the NFL went through with such a response, the players would look like a bunch of Medieval knights running around and tackling each other on a football field. That’s probably the safest way to proceed, but is it something the fans and advertisers would want to watch? I don’t have the answers on that one.
As for the scheduling issue, I think its best if the league office, Buffalo Bills, and Cincinnati Bengals’ executives all meet up and settle the score of the game in a way that does not involve the players having to…well…play. Maybe they should just call it a tie or abandon the game completely as that would seem the fairest option in light of the circumstances.
Nevertheless, the health of Damar Hamlin should be at the top of everyone’s minds right now and all of this scheduling talk can come at a later date.
Pray for Damar Hamlin.
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