No discussion on any key issue in the NFL is complete until we hear from Dolphins linebacker Channing Crowder.
And Crowder has spoken on the issue of helmet-to-helmet hits, offering up possibly the top sound bite of his career, even better than when he said he didn’t realized people in London spoke English. (It sounds like one of those made up Family Guy flashbacks, but it really happened.)
“If they’re going to keep making us go more and more and more like a
feminine sport, we’re going to wear pink every game, not just on the
breast cancer months,” Crowder said, per Hal Habib of the Palm Beach Post.
“They can complain, they can suspend, they can fine and they can do
whatever they want, but you can’t stop a man from playing football the
way he’s been playing since high school,” Crowder said, per Andy Kent of FanHouse.com. “If you go back to James Harrison when he was in high school or middle school, I bet he was hitting people just as hard back then.”
Crowder raises a good point — and the message is that these rules need to trickle down to every lower level of the sport, so that in 2030 the kids who will have become the pros will know how to properly hit and tackle.
It’s not that complicated. First, don’t lead with your helmet, ever. Second, don’t hit a guy who has just caught a pass with your helmet and don’t hit him in the head or neck with any other part of your body.
Still, the men currently playing in the NFL need to at least try to change. It sounds like Crowder won’t.
“When I drop back in coverage and I see a receiver running a crossing
route and I’m about to break on him and hit him I’m not going to think
about, ‘Well let me turn my shoulder or let me aim at his torso.’ I’m
just looking to knock the hell out of him,” Crowder said. “So they can’t change the
game. If they really want to change it they’ll take our face masks off,
but anything they do is not going to work.”
If it doesn’t work, the fund of fines that goes to help former players will grow to unprecedented levels, and guys like Crowder will get a few extra bye weeks, without pay.