You must not pay attention then.Originally Posted by DTCromer
You must not pay attention then.
Cris Carter brought up an interesting point on the violence of the NFL, today on ESPN Radio. "The players are bigger, the padding is bigger, the money is bigger, the hits are bigger, why isn't the field bigger?" He proposed widening the field to cut down on the big hits.
What do you think?
Hugs, smiling, and interactive Twitter accounts, don't mean winning baseball. Until this community understands that we are cursed to relive the madness.
It'd be one thing if it was just bengals fans calling Hines a dirty player, but the fact is the players recognize it also. Look at the article that started this thread. Taking a shot at the head of Rivers was within the rules at the time, so you could call it clean by the rulebook at the time. Now it is considered a dirty play even according to the rules.
Your point of reference is what you can see that cameras have caught over the year AND that you saw what the camera caught. So, clearly your point of reference is limited to 3-4 plays a game if you watched every play of every game for the Steelers. Even then, you are still unqualified. Go to every game and watch only Hines Ward, then you have an educated opinion, or watch film of every game with a camera that includes what Hines Ward is doing on and off the ball and you might get an ear. Right now, you simply do not have enough evidence one way or the other.
I loved Ndwukwe's quote: "He's a blind-side guy."
Lulz. . . how many blindside hits do we constantly see in a football game? I remember seeing one in a Bengals pre-season game on Special teams and NO ONE called the player out for it. In fact, many in the stands cheered.
Everyone would do it if they had the chance and Whines is just better at it.
Blindsiding a guy isn't dirty. Guys going helmet to helmet isn't dirty. Bad fundamentals? Yes, but not dirty. Tackling a QB at the knees as you're falling to the ground isn't dirty. The league has become soft and so have many of you football fans. I mean, how many on here thought Kimo's hit on Carson was dirty? It's football! Injuries happen!
I hate Fines more than most of you. I HATE the guy, but he plays hard.
All-time IMO..... no contest.
The Assassin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJrDYQwwbuY
He made you regret ever wanting to play professional football.
Football is a contact sport. Now I don't say that to condone blindside hits, or players who play dirty; but the truth of the matter is - growing up I loved the hard hitting, smashing type of football. Guys came off that field bloodied and beaten.
And they also didn't have the uniform padding/protection, and rules, that they had today. I don't even know if there were rules back then.
In the last issue of ESPN's Insider Carson Palmer said that somebody is gonna get killed in the NFL. Carson - be glad you didn't play the game 30-40 years ago. The style of play then shortened the careers of quite a few great QB's.
But growing up, I loved players like Dick Butkus, Deacon Jones, Mean Joe Green, and of course - Jack Lambert.
Sorry, but the scariest player ever has to be Lawrence Taylor - "my favorite hits were the ones that popped a snot bubble out of the ballcarrier's nose".
Injuries are a part of the game but Hines goes out of his way to make injuries happen. Going helmet to helmet is designed to try to knock someone out. Stepping on someone is designed to get someone hurt. Blasting someone from a blindside when a guy is running out of bounds is designed to get someone hurt. There are blocks but then there are blocks by Ward which are really cheapshots that he will say is a block. The guy does it a lot and its earned him the dirtiest player in the league by the players. I think its safe to say the players know what is dirty and what isnt.
Maybe I'm just crazy but its pretty easy to distinguish between a clean hit and a dirty hit.
There's a difference between trying to hit someone and trying to hurt someone. Whines Hard tries to hurt people.
Obviously, there has to be some boundaries in a game such as this. Guys wearing armor over most of their body is revealing to the idea. You clearly have the "all's fair in love and war" mindset. "Soft" means "we're going to set some boundaries to make this game as safe as possible without totally neutering the sport." I think that is fair. If you want blood and gore, watch a cage match. That seems to be the equivalent of what you think a football game should look like.
Football is rough enough and most of the measures do nothing to take away from the game, with one qualifier--when refs properly interpret the rule. The biggest problem I see with the safety rules is that the refs call them too strictly, not with the intent of making the game safer.
I do wish Bengals players would stop commenting for stories on him. The last thing the Bengals need to project is that they are intimidated by him.
Actually, some of those things are dirty and illegal, particularly going helmet to helmet. I'd say that the fact the players have designated him a cheap shot artist goes a long way toward whether he's a dirty player or not. Ward should thank his lucky stars right know that he hasn't hit some guy the wrong way and caused permanent disability to himself or the other guy.
If you're such a fan of that kind of play, then I'm sure you'd be more than happy to work in hospice care changing these guys' diapers when they develop dementia from all the concussions they got while making those "hard" plays you seem to enjoy.
Wear gaudy colors, or avoid display. Lay a million eggs or give birth to one. The fittest shall survive, yet the unfit may live. Be like your ancestors or be different. We must repeat!
I'd say the problem with calling these plays are that they aren't called consistently rather than being called too strictly.
Wear gaudy colors, or avoid display. Lay a million eggs or give birth to one. The fittest shall survive, yet the unfit may live. Be like your ancestors or be different. We must repeat!
Hines Ward's hit on Rivers was clean according to the rule book, I'll give you that. However, just because you have a blindside hit on a player doesn't mean you try and knock their heads off. Honestly, Rivers was lucky to walk away with a broken jaw. He was completely defenseless and Ward was clearly going for blood. A shot head to head like that could've definately had life altering affects. You may call that "clean" because there are no rules against it, but I call it dirty because it wasn't neccesary. You want to take him out of the play, block him out of bounds or hit on the pads. Ward threw his body at him full speed when he wasn't looking and was seemingly aiming for the head. Thats the ultimate definition of a cheap shot in my book. That is not what football is about, and I don't want to watch a game where that is considered just part of it.
Someone mentioned this earlier, but the NFL agreed with us. That play is now against the rules.
Help stamp out, eliminate, and do away with redundancy.
I have been watching the NFL since 1975, and the Steelers have been a rough (and sometimes dirty) bunch for most of those 35 seasons.
Of course in the 70s there was Jack Lambert, and I'll never forget the Monday Night Football game in 1983 when defensive end Keith Gary grabbed Ken Anderson's face mask and twisted his head around 180 degrees, in what seemed to be an attempt to remove it from his body. And then there was that play by Kimo in '05 and the hit by Hines last year. Teams are coached to be this way, so yes, team culture plays a major role.
That being said, it has frustrated me that the Bengals have not historically been as tough as teams like the Steelers, the old Raiders, etc. So many times I've seen them take it without dishing it out. I don't want to root for a dirty team, but I don't like to see my favorite team get pushed around, either.
Help stamp out, eliminate, and do away with redundancy.
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