Former Steelers linebacker Greg Lloyd says he’s sick of seeing the way the NFL is changing to a league that makes protecting the quarterback paramount.
“I don’t want to see a game where the damn score is 75-1 or 75-2, all this passing and passing,” Lloyd said on WXIX-TV in Cincinnati, via NFL.com. “I want to see somebody hit a quarterback. . . . That is what people come to see. And at the end of the day if he gets hurt, so be it.”
I’m not sure how Lloyd envisions a game with a score of 75-1 taking place, but whatever: It’s no surprise that Lloyd, who was one of the hardest-hitting linebackers in the league during his playing days, isn’t overly concerned with the safety of quarterbacks. Lloyd does believe, however, that if those quarterbacks who get hurt on the field are affected by those injuries during retirement, the NFL has an obligation to take care of them.
“The point of it is that if the NFL and the league would get behind and start taking care of their older players and taking care of guys, they wouldn’t have these issues,” Lloyd said. “As opposed to saying, ‘Hey, go out there, do it hard, then bang we’re done with you.’”
But there’s the issue the league is facing: The best way to treat injuries is to prevent them from happening, and the changes the league is making that Lloyd objects to are designed to prevent injuries. Lloyd, however, says you simply can’t prevent injuries from happening in the first place.
“This is not PBS, it’s not the public channel that you go watch,” Lloyd said. “It’s the National Football League, it’s a violent freaking game.”