Your NFL news: Week 6

The big story in the NFL this week seems to be the growing concern over violent hits. The more research that is done on concussions, the scarier some of these helmet-to-helmet collisions become. There were at least three concussions on Sunday and a number of other head injuries as well. In response the NFL has announced that it will unveil new head protection rules in time for next week’s games. As usual this has led to a flurry of commentary about whether this is long overdue or an affront to football’s nature.

A sample of the reporting on each side:

“Sunday, we had the ghastly spectacle of an NFL in which it is completely forbidden to jump around happily after a touchdown -- but perfectly fine to make a sadistic helmet-to-helmet hit that can cause lifelong harm…. [E]ach year about 1 million play football, most of them high school boys. The NFL not doing everything possible to prevent head injury sets an awful example for the high school players who model themselves on what they see in the pros.” [from Gregg Easterbrook, "NFL must enforce rules, hit back"]

“I loved and was completely enthralled by every one of those violent encounters and I'm not afraid to admit it. That is the essence of this sport we all adore called football. My guess is that deep down the vast majority of people out there feel the exact same way, whether they would confess to it publicly or not.” [from Ross Tucker, "Hard hits will keep coming"]

We’ll have to wait and see what exactly the NFL proposes, and of course whether or not it does anything to protect the players.

James Harrison, fined $75,000 for a violent hit on Sunday

Dunta Robinson, was fined $50,000 for his hit 

Brandon Meriweather was also fined $50,000 this week

Jenn Sterger

Finally, to follow-up on last week’s story, Brett Favre had a meeting today with the head of NFL security. Not sure what exactly they discussed, but apparently the woman at the centre of this controversy doesn’t want to cooperate with the NFL (whatever that means), so the whole thing may end there - at least as far as the NFL is concerned. His wife may not move on so easily.

You may have noticed that we did not have a Monday Man yesterday. Given that Your NFL news will be posted on Monday or Tuesday, this feature will be moved to Wednesday.