The Helmet-to-Helmet Rule Needs to Change

A lot of stuff happened in the world of sports today, didn't it?  Jerry Sandusky waived his hearing and is going right to trial, which isn't really "news" since it was going to happen anyway (the going to trial part, not the waiving his hearing part).  Bernie Fine's accusers have hired Gloria Allred and sued both Jim Boeheim and Syracuse University.  I'm not saying Bernie Fine didn't do anything to these guys, but you can't tell me they aren't just in it for money.  The suspensions for the Cincinnati-Xavier fight have been announced.  Yancy Gates only got six games.  I say only because he deserved more.  He went all Ron Artest on Xavier.  Tim McCarver was elected into the broadcasters' wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame.  How?  Were they out of announcers?  Albert signed with the Angels because the Cardinals only offered him a five-year deal at first.  It'll still be weird to see him in another uniform, though.  Details of baseball's new labor deal have started to leak out.  They'll get their own blog post next time.

But my topic du jour is the one-game suspension handed down by the NFL to Steelers linebacker James Harrison for his helmet-to-helmet hit on Browns quarterback Colt McCoy on Thursday night.  Just as Ndamukong Suh (the other poster child for Roger Baddell's crackdown on player safety) comes back from suspension, Harrison is suspended.  I think it's some sort of unwritten NFL rule that they aren't both allowed to play in the same week.

I saw the entire Steelers-Browns game, and I don't think Harrison's hit warranted a suspension.  A fine maybe, but even that's borderline in my opinion.  The hit was a penalty.  I'm not saying it wasn't.  But I think that was the extent of it.  The only reason a suspension came about was because it was James Harrison, who seems to get fined for an illegal hit every week.  And for me, that opens up a whole different can of worms. 

I've actually been sitting on this topic for a while now, and this is as good a time as any to finally make this point.  I'm all for player safety, but some of these defensive players are getting penalized/fined/suspended for helmet-to-helmet hits that they can't avoid.  The "defenseless" receiver might not be defenseless when the play actually develops.  That's really something the NFL needs to start taking into consideration.

Sometimes helmet-to-helmet hits are very much intentional.  It's pretty obvious when they're deliberate.  In those cases, the protocol is correct.  If a defender goes flying in when a play is already over and hits a receiver that's lying on the ground with his helmet, that's 15 yards for unnecessary roughness and a fine.  Anytime that a defender uses his helmet to make a tackle, that's a 15-yard penalty and probably a fine.  Those are clear violations of the rules, and I have no problem with the appropriate punishments being applied in those situations.

But then there are other times when helmet-to-helmet hits are the unfortunate, unavoidable results of bad timing.  How many times have guys left their feet to make a tackle, then gotten a penalty for hitting a receiver who ducked down at the last second?  This is actually the scenario that bothers me the most with this rule.  When the defender leaves his feet, he's about to make a legal tackle.  That only changes once the receiver goes to the ground.  Now you're telling me that the defender's supposed to realize that the other guy went to the ground, determine whether or not he's going to end up hitting him helmet-first, and (if he is) change direction, all during the two seconds he's in the air. 

In most cases, the receiver probably knows what's going to happen first and ducks down for the sole purpose of drawing the penalty.  I give the receivers that have that kind of foresight a ton of credit.  But why are defenders the only ones held accountable in these situations?  Sometimes things happen so fast that the helmet-to-helmet hits are unavoidable.  It's the same thing when a quarterback decides to slide at the last second or gets hit a split-second after he throws a pass.  How's the defender supposed to stop?  There's no way to avoid the hit (and the penalty).

There's also a clear double-standard here.  Linemen bang helmets trying to block each other on every freakin' play.  Nothing's ever called on them.  Running backs are allowed (in fact, encouraged) to lower their heads and take the impact if it'll get them a few more yards.  Then why do defenders get 15-yard penalties for hitting those same running backs in the helmet?  Evidently, it's totally fine if you get plowed into like a battering ram, but you're not allowed to try and make a tackle when that happens (how many face masks are called on plays like this, too?).

I think common sense needs to enter the equation on helmet-to-helmet hits (I know common sense is often a problem when it comes to NFL rules, though).  There's a big difference between the unavoidable kind and the deliberate kind.  The deliberate kind is the one that deserves the unnecssary roughness penalties, fines and suspensions.  Also, stop making rules that are only applied one way.  Every helmet-to-helmet tackle is automatically the defender's "fault."  That's not always the case.  If you can have offensive pass interference, why can't you have an offensive helmet-to-helmet hit?  Finally, apply the same rules to everybody.  Stop singling out guys.  Ndumakong Suh and James Harrison aren't the only guilty parties here, regardless of what the NFL would like us to believe.