Hi Ben! Thanks for sharing again the thoughts on that topic with us again. I’m Brazilian. I follow soccer Like you do with football since young age. Played (and coached) until college. The discussion is the same - “the game has changed for worse for this, this and that…”. It’s a lot more productive way of looking at the sport like you do at football and fantasy. Sports change with time, games are different. We must understand and (try to) look ahead. Thanks again for sharing the thoughts.
A lot of the pushback you have gotten has been over the top and unfair on the player safety issues. I think a fairer pushback to the discussion in general is how can you make the game as safe as possible without fundamentally changing what the game is. At some point there is an implied cost/benefit decision each player is making to trade off the risk of long-term health issues with the financial benefits of playing football which 99% of the American population will never have a chance at obtaining. It would be one thing if playing in the NFL had a massive risk of ending up like the players you mentioned, but it does appear as those cases are the outlier. That doesn't make them any less said or worth remembering, but there also needs to be proper context around them when looking at the league and sport as a whole. If there are rules that can make the game safer without changing the fundamentals of football those should be absolutely implemented and encouraged. The Chiefs/Rams game that often gets cited, in my opinion, would not make for a great NFL as the typical game that would be happening on Sunday's. Scoring touchdowns should mean something, if that game were the norm the excitement of it would wear off eventually [quickly] as each individual touchdown would become less exciting knowing there were 10 more coming. The reason that game sticks out to people now is because it WAS such an outlier. I won't pretend to know enough about the rules of football to propose rule changes for the hip drop or head safety concerns, my only point to the people who are the ones who understand football well enough to be the people to address those issues is focus on the sport as a whole and not to get tunnel vision on fixing those issues resulting in a complete changing of the sport into an unrecognizable game.
NBA has gone through (I think several) major evolutions in the past ~two decades. Pace/tempo uptick (heard a stat from Zach Lowe the other day that Steve Nash’s revolutionary Suns would be last in the league in tempo), 3 point revolution (volume and percentage), positionless basketball (big wings that can do everything and guard everyone), among others eg schematic stuff. Data and analytics has helped accelerate all this change. Its hard to compare cross sport on this since the games are so different. I think change is more talked about in NBA than NFL evolution though. Very much appreciate your thoughts on bigger picture stuff as always.
Hi Ben! Thanks for sharing again the thoughts on that topic with us again. I’m Brazilian. I follow soccer Like you do with football since young age. Played (and coached) until college. The discussion is the same - “the game has changed for worse for this, this and that…”. It’s a lot more productive way of looking at the sport like you do at football and fantasy. Sports change with time, games are different. We must understand and (try to) look ahead. Thanks again for sharing the thoughts.
Really appreciated this article. Had never heard about Jovan Belcher, thank you for mentioning his tragic story.
A lot of the pushback you have gotten has been over the top and unfair on the player safety issues. I think a fairer pushback to the discussion in general is how can you make the game as safe as possible without fundamentally changing what the game is. At some point there is an implied cost/benefit decision each player is making to trade off the risk of long-term health issues with the financial benefits of playing football which 99% of the American population will never have a chance at obtaining. It would be one thing if playing in the NFL had a massive risk of ending up like the players you mentioned, but it does appear as those cases are the outlier. That doesn't make them any less said or worth remembering, but there also needs to be proper context around them when looking at the league and sport as a whole. If there are rules that can make the game safer without changing the fundamentals of football those should be absolutely implemented and encouraged. The Chiefs/Rams game that often gets cited, in my opinion, would not make for a great NFL as the typical game that would be happening on Sunday's. Scoring touchdowns should mean something, if that game were the norm the excitement of it would wear off eventually [quickly] as each individual touchdown would become less exciting knowing there were 10 more coming. The reason that game sticks out to people now is because it WAS such an outlier. I won't pretend to know enough about the rules of football to propose rule changes for the hip drop or head safety concerns, my only point to the people who are the ones who understand football well enough to be the people to address those issues is focus on the sport as a whole and not to get tunnel vision on fixing those issues resulting in a complete changing of the sport into an unrecognizable game.
NBA has gone through (I think several) major evolutions in the past ~two decades. Pace/tempo uptick (heard a stat from Zach Lowe the other day that Steve Nash’s revolutionary Suns would be last in the league in tempo), 3 point revolution (volume and percentage), positionless basketball (big wings that can do everything and guard everyone), among others eg schematic stuff. Data and analytics has helped accelerate all this change. Its hard to compare cross sport on this since the games are so different. I think change is more talked about in NBA than NFL evolution though. Very much appreciate your thoughts on bigger picture stuff as always.