re: 49ers LB Brooks: Maybe the refs were "for the Saints"

quote:

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Normally, I'm all over the argument that football is getting turned into a pussy sport with all the penalties to protect players and cover the league's arse in lawsuits.

But that tackle was ridiculous. I think a flag would have been thrown 20 years ago. You can't clothesline a player like that. Under the right circumstances, you can snap a player's neck doing that shite!

I get that it's football and the goal is to sack the shite out of the qb and force a fumble. But come on...

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Actually, rules to protect the neck have been in place a lot longer than rules against hitting the helmet. Old school thought was the helmet protects the head, and the neck is not protected.

So much talk about head injuries and helmet hits that these so called experts, many of them former players, seemingly do not understand why a blow to the neck is serious and should be called.

Having said that, had Brooks not continued to follow through, they probably wouldn't have called the flag. Instead Brooks turned Brees into a crash test dummy and took him all the way down to the ground by his neck and had the underside of his facemask (or was holding onto Brees' chin like a bowling ball.)

How anyone would pick this play as an example of the rules being bad is beyond me. Pick a play where a flag is called for touching a QB's helmet if you want to argue against the rule, not a play that could have broken a guy's neck.