There is no English noun that adequately expresses what millions of fans experience on the eve of the pro football season. Only something like the ancient Greek concept of ataraxia – which literally means no disturbance or disturbance but rather a kind of sublime contentment – begins to approach our unique sense of detachment from all that is. worldly care. The NFL makes ataraxia available to each and every one of us three days a week, which should be a high number among the dubious creations of late modernity.
This year, alas, my sense of peace was threatened by the NFL’s decision to change the rules governing kickoffs. For the 2023 season, which begins Thursday, any player on the receiving team will be allowed to signal for a “fair catch” from anywhere between the goal line and his 25-yard line, instead of to pass the ball and face the wrath of 11 players on the other team who flocked to him like a phalanx of hoplites. After a fair catch, the ball is placed on the 25-yard line (just like after a traditional “touchback” in the end zone).
If, poor creature, you don’t follow football, the bottom line is that the league creates an incentive not to return the ball on kickoffs — the type of play that is reported to have a higher risk of concussions. This new rule, adopted in the name of player safety, is the latest and worst in a series of changes that the NFL has made the kickoff in recent years, in what seems to be a prelude to eliminating it altogether.
This is a terrible idea. Besides being widely unpopular with fans, players and coaches, the new rule is questionable in its effectiveness, soulless in its corporate logic and a threat to the ethos of blue-collar toughness that once defined it. in this great game. I fear the wrath of the football gods.
Like Gaul, football is divided into three parts: offense, defense and special teams. The kickoff belongs to the last of these phases, and in many ways it is the aspect of football that has changed the least since the invention of the game. Offenses have evolved over the past half century from lumbering ground operations that reward raw collective effort (“three yards and a cloud of dust”) to high-flying attacks that favor of an elite few “skill” players. Defenses do their best to adapt to an ever-changing set of sophisticated strategies. But kickoffs largely remain the same, a preserve of the old-fashioned rush, an arena where effort becomes more important than God-given ability.
With the exception of kick-return specialists — speedsters like Ray-Ray McCloud of the San Francisco 49ers — special teams players are usually drawn from the second and third strings of active rosters, the unheralded players who hoping to make the squad. They tend to be guys like Grant Stuard, a linebacker for the Indianapolis Colts and the last player selected in the 2021 NFL draft. (This is likely one reason the new fair-catch option was largely ignored during this year’s preseason exhibition games: Players looking to survive final roster cuts enthusiastically returned kicks at the prospect to impress their coaches with a big runback.)
Some players, like Matthew Slater of the New England Patriots, have elevated special teams play to a kind of art form. Slater, an unheralded fifth-round draft pick out of UCLA who had never been a full-time player on offense or defense, often undercut kicks in opponents’ territory, often making difficult open-field tackle and was selected to the Pro Bowl 10 times. That’s the kind of underdog story football needs more of.
But kickoffs aren’t just about an unsung work ethic. They have also produced many of the NFL’s most exciting moments: the so-called Music City Miracle in 2000; Desmond Howard’s 99-yard touchdown return in Super Bowl XXXI, which helped earn him the honor of the game’s most valuable player; Gale Sayerslike every time he touches the ball.
Eliminating kickoffs also means sacrificing some of the science of the game. Special teams has long been an important component of strategy, especially for the game’s greatest coaches, such as Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots (who has been known to give impromptu lectures on the subject to bewildered journalists). The 2010 San Diego Chargers had arguably the best offense and best defense in the league and a roster full of current and future Hall of Famers – and they failed to even make the playoffs because of their historically bad streak. special teams play.
All of these considerations, you might protest, pale before the goal of making players safer. But it is not clear that the new fair arrest rule will have this desired effect. There is no good evidence that past kickoff changes have helped as much as expected. According to the data collected and analyzed by Sports IllustratedConcussions during kickoffs nearly doubled from 2020 to 2022, which could be an indication that the changes to the earlier rules had unintended consequences. increasing risk – more squib kicksperhaps, or more floating like kicks, both of which could result in more collisions.
There is a deeper point here about the questionable wisdom of sudden, top-down change. Football is not a rationalist business whose rules can be adjusted on a whim according to the tinkering logic of business consultants and risk-averse corporate lawyers. It is a violent sport with a particular history and has players and coaches and a fan base of millions who care about keeping it in the past. Evolution can happen, but organically.
Many players and coaches are formal opposed the new kickoff rule when it was proposed, but like many workers before them, they found themselves helpless in the face of HR Other coaches continued to voice their opposition, including Belichick, John Harbaugh of the Baltimore Ravens (who suggested that the rule change could result in more injuries) and Andy Reid of the Kansas City Chiefs (who warned that if the league continues to eliminate fundamental aspects of the game, the NFL team will find themselves “playing flag football”).
During a recent preseason broadcast, former Arizona Cardinals fullback Ron Wolfley called the rule change an “abomination,” sounding an appropriately apocalyptic note, and suggested that the football by definition is not safe.
I for one agree with him. I hope the NFL chooses to reconsider and revise its decision at the end of the season (as it sometimes does with other rule changes). Football, with its stylized warfare between city-states, its ritualistic celebration of unethical heroes, trophies and its encouragement of a quasi-pagan fatalism in the face of defeat, is but one of the traces of our classical heritage.
Homer captures the spirit of the NFL when he dismisses mortality as less than the concern of the noble soul: “As the generations of leaves, so are men. As for the leaves, the wind scattered some on the ground.â€
Matthew Walther is the editor of The Lamp, a Catholic literary journal, and a contributing Opinion writer.
Source photos by greg801 and Zadas_Photography, via Getty Images.
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