Head injuries and concussion

Discussion in 'National Football League' started by Leicester Jet, Jul 14, 2022.

  1. Leicester Jet

    Leicester Jet Well-Known Member

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    A very interesting article posted on the BBC Sport website

    https://www.bbc.com/sport/rugby-union/62146940

    Players at this year's women's Rugby World Cup will be offered the use of 'smart' mouthguards to help monitor the risk of head injury.

    The microchipped protective shield measures head impacts.

    If the trial proves to be a success I could see the NFL bringing a similar thing in, as a safety measure.
     
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  2. Greenday4537

    Greenday4537 Well-Known Member

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    Stuff like this is used at peewee levels already. I'm surprised it's not in the NFL. But then they'd have to admit there's a problem.
     
  3. Jonathan_Vilma

    Jonathan_Vilma Well-Known Member

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    There’s no way to play a football game without getting your bell rung to an extent. And that’s just a single game drawing from my experience in high school. I can only imagine what the head trauma really is playing all those years from 14-35.
     
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  4. ukjetsfan

    ukjetsfan Well-Known Member

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    Absolutely correct, and this is the really scary part about the whole thing. It's going to happen no matter how many precautionary measures they bring in. The only way to stop it is to turn football into something completely different.
     
  5. Br4d

    Br4d 2018 Weeb Ewbank Award

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    OL and DL live into their 50's, maybe 60's if they're lucky and 70's if they are extremely lucky.

    You give up 20 years of your life to play in the trenches in the NFL. Most of that is playing at an unhealthy weight for a long period of time but some of it is definitely an accumulation of head trauma over the years.
     
  6. KingRoach

    KingRoach Well-Known Member

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    They want to turn it into something unwatchable and rename it “baseball”.
     
  7. Greenday4537

    Greenday4537 Well-Known Member

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  8. Bills over Jets

    Bills over Jets Jets over Bills

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    The mouthpiece will not fix the problem. Those stupid extra pads on the helmets in training camp will not fix the problem.

    Your brain sits in fluid inside your skull. Think of it like an ice ball inside a glass of water. Move the glass around, and that ice ball is going to slosh around in the water and hit the sides of the glass. That's what our brains do upon contact. You can wrap the glass with as much padding as youd like, its not going to stop the ball of ice from moving along with the water when its shaken.

    CTE will never be removed from the list of risks associated with playing tackle football. The NFL is doing everything for public image, so it looks like they care, but they know what we all know and what I'm saying above. I've deposed the top brain physicians in the US. There's a whole bunch of other statistics and info that most are not aware of that the NFL wants to keep quiet, such as you dont even need to hit your head on something for there to be a traumatic brain injury. If you play tackle football, you will have brain damage, its that simple.
     
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  9. jets_fan

    jets_fan Well-Known Member

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    Well stated.

    One thing that I've always thought could help the problem would be to outlaw tackle football until the players reach high school. It helps in a two-fold manner, I think. First, and most obviously, it lessens the number of lifetime collisions. But, secondly, a lot of kids are not taught proper technique for how to do some of the things that they do that puts them in those situations where they are sustaining these blows to the head, such as blocking and tackling. Watch a high school training camp and, especially with the younger players, watch the coaches have to unteach a lot of what has been learned at the lower levels. This certainly won't solve the problem, but lowering the number of lifetime collisions and beginning to play tackle football at a time when your body is more mature and you are more likely (not guaranteed by any means, of course, but more likely nonetheless) to receive quality coaching couldn't hurt.
     
  10. Greenday4537

    Greenday4537 Well-Known Member

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    I think the biggest shock about CTE was how severe it is for linemen. Everyone sees the big hits receivers get, DB's deliver, RBs take. Linemen collide with each other, although at lesser speeds, 60ish times per game if you start and play every offensive snap? That's a lot of collisions.
     
  11. stinkyB

    stinkyB 2009 Best Avatar Award Winner

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  12. Jonathan_Vilma

    Jonathan_Vilma Well-Known Member

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    Eh while I agree with a lot of it and mouth pieces/padded helmets aren’t a magic bullet, they can only help.

    It’s amazing how different it effects people. I do agree that most if not all end up with some sort of brain trauma.

    Jovan Belcher played four years of NFL football and you can include all of his youth career and he ended up severely sick by age 25. Put that next to Roy Jones Jr. for example who fought for 20 years in the boxing ring and is completely fine. Or Brian Dawkins who played 16 years and made a Hall of Fame career out of leading with his head and at least up to this point seems fine.

    Scary disease for sure.
     
  13. BrowningNagle

    BrowningNagle Well-Known Member

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    I disagree strongly. Watch a youth football game sometime they are all pads! When they hit each other, because they are small, it is always so low impact. You have an opportunity to teach them how to block and tackle correctly, while it is still healthy.

    I've seen youth football leagues switching to flag and then you get to a place where they are big adult-sized players without a clue how to hit each other. That's very dangerous IMO
     
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  14. Dierking

    Dierking Well-Known Member

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    Exactly.
     
  15. REVISion

    REVISion Well-Known Member

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    Yeah I think the latest research shows that numerous small hits are actually worse for your brain than a fewer number of severe hits.

    That's one of the reasons it's suspected that boxing is worse for your brain than MMA, for example. You may suffer a horrific KO in MMA but taking triple digit shots to the head every fight over your career in boxing would probably be worse.
     
  16. jets_fan

    jets_fan Well-Known Member

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    They don't know how to hit people now when they get to that size. Often times, they are taught, or allowed to get away with (as the saying goes, if you're allowing it, you're teaching it) very poor technique at the lower levels, which makes it rather dangerous for them when they begin encountering bigger and stronger opponents. Being taught the other fundamentals of the game at lower levels and then being taught what to do with the more physical aspects of the game once they reach an older age is something that even some professional players advocate as well. Warren Sapp, for instance, has said as such.

    If they are being taught correctly, then that's fine, but from what I have seen, there is a lot of unteaching that is required at the high school level in order to get the kids to play the game safely. The impacts at a younger age may be lower impact, but they're still impacts nonetheless, and they accumulate, which is a lot of what the problem is facing the linemen. They're not getting drilled mid-air like a receiver going over the middle, but a receiver may sustain maybe a handful of those over the course of a game, whereas the line is constantly crashing together, even at lower levels.

    Now, if you have a youth program that is truly teaching their kids how to play the game the correct way, then that's great, and that's something to be applauded. A large number of them, however, are not taught the fundamentals that they need to know in order to safely play the game, and it results in a lot of bad habits that continue until they reach an age where they are more likely to encounter a higher quality of coaching.

    Making such a move will never happen. There's too much money involved in the game at all levels to result in them significantly altering the way the game is organized at the sub-college level, but it is something that I think should at least be discussed.
     

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