Football hasn’t become a violent sport. It always has been. And the National Football League thrived on this violence for decades, even selling VHS tapes (Google this, kids) of the game’s most massive, bone-crushing hits.
The violence was part of the attraction. It was part of the allure, until players began to mentally decline quickly after their careers because of the constant pounding. It was long overdue, but the NFL decided to take the health of their players seriously. They got tired of hearing the stories of retired players displaying erratic behavior, or even committing suicide as Dave Duerson and Junior Seau did.
On Saturday night, Patriots rookie cornerback Isaiah Bolden was covering a slant pattern by Green Bay’s Malik Heath before he was struck in the head area by the knee of teammate Calvin Munson, who converged on Heath to make the tackle.
Bolden, from Jackson State and one of the prize transfers for coach Deion Sanders after beginning his career at Florida State, did not move. He did not flinch, frozen because of the vicious contact, eyes closed.
Thankfully, Bolden was released from a Green Bay-area hospital and was able to travel back to Foxborough with his teammates. The club then canceled joint practices with the Tennessee Titans in preparation for Friday’s preseason finale. They will collect their thoughts, work out at home, and then travel to Nashville Thursday.
Bolden’s injury was frightening, but we’ve seen this before. We are all football fans. We’ve seen concussed players. We’ve seen players staggering back to huddles or their spine damaged after a helmet to the back. Old-school Patriots fans certainly remember promising receiver Darryl Stingley getting speared by Oakland’s Jack Tatum, ending Stingley’s career and turning him into a quadriplegic.
That was in a preseason game 45 years ago. The game continued. There was little compassion. I recall Tatum on camera weeks later matter-of-factly wishing Stingley a “speedy recovery,” which may have been the most insincere gesture in the history of professional sports. In Tatum’s eyes, both were gladiators in a vicious game and Stingley was just the unfortunate victim. You just play on.
Patriots coach Bill Belichick was a 26-year-old assistant special teams coach and defensive assistant for the Denver Broncos at the time of that tragic play. Perhaps Belichick didn’t immediately recall Saturday night Stingley lying motionless on the Oakland Coliseum field, but he realized that his 23-year-old rookie suffered a serious head injury and his players weren’t in the mental state to continue the final 10 minutes.
Belichick called for the game to be stopped, which is significant considering in those final 10 minutes of the second preseason games, young, emerging players are fighting for roster spots and practice squad opportunities or attempting to show skills to other clubs.
But in the light of the possibility of a life-threatening injury, such as last season’s cardiac arrest suffered by Buffalo’s Damar Hamlin, even those hard-headed, old-school NFL diehards are acknowledging that injury, mental health, and compassion are more important than any game.
“I really appreciate what Coach Belichick did tonight,” special teams ace Matthew Slater said. “He took the initiative on that. This is not the AFC Championship. We’re not playing for records. This is preseason game two. When you have an injury like that, it affects a lot of different guys in a lot of different ways, and clearly our team was shaken by what happened and I think coach made the right decision. That was one of the proudest moments I’ve had as a guy who’s played for him for now 16 years.”
Finally, the NFL has not only embraced player safety, but changed rules to prevent injury. It’s not the NFL of the 80s and 90s when Ronnie Lott or Steve Atwater were lurking in the defensive backfield and then launching themselves into defenseless receivers for jarring hits. Many of these were placed on those VHS tapes. Hard hits were celebrated. The game of football was war, and those who prevailed were the last ones standing, regardless of whether they were concussed or walking off the field with degenerative knees or mangled hands. They were lauded as heroes.
Those warriors were idolized, revered. But they also sacrificed the second half of their lives for this adulation. And remember, many NFL contracts are not fully guaranteed, so thousands of these “heroes” were never able to create generational wealth.
If the NFL is not going to fully guarantee contracts, the least they could do is make their sport safer, blending the artistic beauty with the magnetic physicality. And it’s OK for the league to openly show concern and compassion for their fallen heroes and those rookie seventh-round picks who lay motionless after trying to make a play to impress a position coach.
The sport will not lose any of its “manhood” or luster or attraction. Football is still a game that only the brave can play. It’s still the ultimate contact sport. But the NFL also had to adjust and conform to changing times. The world pays more attention and offers more acknowledgment and respect for mental health. “Swallow your spit and tough it out” are no longer sage pieces of advice.
So credit the emotionless Belichick for his compassion, for reading the psyches of his players and realizing it was time to stop before perhaps another serious or scary injury occurred. We understand. Injuries are part of the game. The NFL is never going to be without concussions and torn ACLs, torn triceps, and dislocated shoulders. It’s never going to be injury-free.
But what the NFL is finally realizing is that these men, these warriors, will have lives after football far after the spotlight has faded. There were still heroes like Stingley, who went on to earn his degree from Purdue, worked in player personnel for the Patriots, and even started his own nonprofit organization in his hometown of Chicago.
They are still warriors and still men, even when they lay motionless on that field of battle. They deserve our respect.
Gary Washburn is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at gary.washburn@globe.com. Follow him @GwashburnGlobe.
August 21, 2023 at 05:21AM
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NFL at last learning hard lessons about compassion, mental health, and manhood - The Boston Globe
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