This season alone Daniel Jones and now Brock Purdy have got injured during QB sneaks. There’s also been multiple cases of LBs and DBs launching themselves headfirst in an attempt to stop QB sneaks…Fred Warner did so on Monday night.
Football is a violent sport. The CTE conversation over the last decade means there’s a lot more focus on minimising head to head contact in the sport.
The QB sneak is probably the only play left where the two opposing lines literally bang heads.
Given the controversial conversations about the Eagles “Tush Push” (Which is basically the QB sneak on steroids) and Mahomes also getting his knee twisted on one a few years ago…will the MNF incident be the excuses the NFL clings onto to ban this play for safety reasons?
The NFL is obsessed with protecting the QB. They outlawed below the knee hits after the Brady injury in 2008…RTP gets enforced more frequently than ever before…The Unnecessary roughness penalties when a sliding QB gets hit etc.
They have been looking for ways to get rid of the Eagles’ tush push play.A head injury to a QB ( One of the league’s most promising young QBs at that) during a similar play provides a very good pathway to ban ALL QB sneaks for safety reasons…whether fans agree with that or not.
Ok. This isn’t my idea or anything. It’s an observation.
Just pointing out that given the NFL’s trend in recent years to improve player safety in general…I can easily see them banning a play where 10 or so players line up a foot apart and hit each other headfirst to create space for 1 yrd.
It takes a major QB injury for the NFL to make these kinds of “Safety” changes. Don’t shoot the messenger…and don’t be surprised if this becomes a legit discussion in the next CBA.