Actually, the title to this item should have flipped the “Adrian Peterson” and the “is”, and the question mark should have been replaced with an exclamation point. But since I recently gave Rosenthal a hard time, Twitter style, for using Jake Jarmel’s most despised punctuation mark, I decided to exercise a little discretion.
Last week, when Vikings running back Adrian Peterson opted not to step out of bounds but instead to punish Lions safety Louis Delmas for having the audacity to get in All Day’s way, the resulting helmets-first collision was precisely the kind of thing I’ve been telling my kid not to do while playing football.
And, indeed, players at every level below the NFL are instructed, repeatedly, not to lead with their hats.
Our pal Drew Magary (we consider him a pal — but we realize there’s a 58-percent chance he actually hates us) of Deadspin recently articulated the point with an homage to The Longest Yard: “Purple Jesus Is Gonna Break His F–king Neck.”
We parroted Magary’s take in this week’s SportingNews.com 10-Pack, and today a voice more authoritative than either Magary’s or mine agreed.
Charley Casserly of CBS said during The NFL Today that Peterson is risking serious injury with his helmet-down running style.
Potential hazards include breaking his f–king neck.
So with kids throughout the country hoping to run the ball like Adrian Peterson, at what point does the NFL have an obligation to use penalty flags and/or fines to help keep kids with much stronger neck muscles from emulating Peterson’s recklessness by doing something that lands deep into the wrong side of the line that separates bravery and stupidity.
Yes he is. To the poor bastards that get in his way every week. AD does the punishing.
Florio youre saying kid have stronger neck muscles than A Peterson?
Also, who was the last NFL RB to break his neck??
Florio…..they already have skirts on the QB’s, now you want tiara’s on the RB’s??Why don’t they just ban football and make it soccer. The NFL needs more players like AD……remember the NFL glory days of butkus, singletary, jim brown……back when football was football.
Peterson has been fragile in the past, but he’s at least smart enough to know it, and smart enough to realize that the life span of an NFL RB is short.
He knows he won’t get to play long, and he wants to go down as one of the all-time greats. So he’s gonna do what it takes to get there, and he’s gonna fight for every single yard. Good for him, he’s clearly not in it just to get paid. The league needs more players like him.
If there is one thing the league DOESN’T need however, it’s more fines or penalties. I cringe at the suggestion.
Florio, you and I are both fathers. You obviously know professional athletes are not good role models, and you very well SHOULD know how to get your son to listen to his dad instead of doing what his favorite player does. If some kid out there is still too stupid to know better, that’s on their parents, NOT Mr. Peterson.
When I played RB, my coach ALWAYS told me to lower my head and make em pay for trying to tackle me.
This is football, not ballerina camp.
Seeing as you started with a rather lengthy paragraph about use of punctuation, I cannot resist asking you whether the last paragraph should end with a question mark rather than a period.
After all, I’m Ron Burgundy?
Oh, and did anyone else play high school ball in the mid-90s, and have the out of body experience that was watching a mandatory video on the dangers of the “axial lode?”
You are a PUUUUUUSSSSSSYYYYYY!!!!!!!