NFL To Announce Suspensions For Helmet To Helmet Hits

Added on Oct 18, 2010 by Jason Kearney in

NFL

Following a weekend of carnage in which a college football player was critically injured and several NFL players sidelined by helmet to helmet hits the NFL has announced that they’ll no longer be tolerated at the professional level. In the past the NFL has fined first and in some cases second time offenders, but under the revised policy even first time offenders will be suspended. Currently, players can be ejected from games for illegal hits but it rarely happens.

Ray Anderson, the NFL’s President of Football Operations, made the new position crystal clear:

“We can’t and won’t tolerate what we saw Sunday. We’ve got to get the message to players that these devastating hits and head shots will be met with a very necessary higher standard of accountability. We have to dispel the notion that you get one free pass in these egregious or flagrant shots.”

“What we saw Sunday was disturbing. We’re talking about avoiding life-altering impacts.”

Props to the NFL for not messing around here. This is why they are and will be the most powerful property in sports–they saw a situation that had serious potential repercussions for the health and well being of their players as well as their public image and took immediate action. No blaming the media for the situation. No prevarication or equivocation–just taking responsibility and taking action.

A big target of criticism has been Steelers’ linebacker James Harrison who sidelined a pair of Cleveland Browns’ receivers on Sunday. Harrison didn’t exactly downplay the severity of his hits with this ‘I like to hurt people’ quote:

“I don’t want to injure anybody. There’s a big difference between being hurt and being injured. You get hurt, you shake it off and come back the next series or the next game. I try to hurt people.”

Obviously some of that is the mentality that you need to have to be successful as an NFL linebacker. And while I get the distinction between ‘bringing the pain’ and injuring someone at least two of Harrison’s hits on Sunday resulted in injury with Browns’ receivers Joshua Cribbs and Mohamed Massaquoi likely out of Cleveland’s next game with concussions.