because most NFL players these days are soft when it comes to the mentality of the old game. They have accepted the rule changes and if they protest they feel they will become a target.
Burfict took 4mil in fines and still kept hitting people regardless of rule changes. He is playing the old game. dam the consequences.
I don't see how you can't see that Burfict is an extreme fringe case. When players start getting suspended for hits like Von or Chubb get flagged for you'll have a point, but they aren't.
If this were Burfict's first offense you might also have a point, but it isn't. This has been a 6 year pattern of behavior. How many chances is he supposed to get?
I can tell you from direct observation that Burfict is or would have been a POS thug in any era. The argument that he doesn't fit into today's "soft" NFL is horse shit. Now, you could argue that if this was in the 50's or 60's someone would have ended his career some time ago, because that kind of stuff did happen to the notoriously dirty players
“What fresh hell is this?”
"A man who picks a cat up by the tail learns something which he can learn in no other way." - Mark Twain
PS - weird being on the same side as BW, but there you have it
“What fresh hell is this?”
"A man who picks a cat up by the tail learns something which he can learn in no other way." - Mark Twain
To be fair to Shane's perspective, I went back last night and looked at a list of every single NFL player suspended for any reason since 2008. That should more than encompass the "player safety era". I wanted to see if oversuspending players for on-field incidents was really a big issue.
What I found was that over that timeframe, only one player in the NFL has ever been suspended for more than 2 games for an on-field incident involving player safety: Vontaze Burfict. He's literally the only one. Most of the suspensions I found were one game, and a few were for 2. And you have Burfict with now 3 suspensions of 3+ games for player safety incidents.
This should prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is an extreme edge case, and not the new norm of NFL punishment. There is a great argument to be made that the NFL is going overboard in enforcing player safety measures. This is the dumbest example you could use to make that case.
Yep.
Suh has had two suspensions, both for leg stomping. One for 2 games, one for one game.
Rodney Harrison and James Harrison were each only suspended one game each for on field play.
Albert Haynesworth is one I missed looking back further than 08. In 06 he was suspended 5 games for stomping on Andre Gurode.
Neither Hines Ward nor Cortland Finnegan were ever suspended.
So I did find ONE example outside Burfict of a 3+ game suspension. One 13 years ago.
If anything, you could probably argue from that data that the NFL has underpunished over that period of time moreso than overpunished when it comes to egregious on-field conduct.
Yeah, that era likely led to where we are now. The recognition that the shit was getting out of hand, bad CTE press etc.
If the same rules applied now were applied back then, you'd likely see some of those guys with multiple 3+ game suspensions and possibly bans.
But like you said... that era is over. It's been well established and communicated. You either get with the times or you get suspended.
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