For NFL fans

[Achilles]

Oh definitely. I’d say the evolution of football in the last 20 is just as dramatic as MMA, and I can’t think of another sport even in the conversation. It’s totally different.
If you look at the top 20 all time passing yards in a season, 19 of them have happened since 2011. Dan Marino somehow passed for 5,000 yards in 1984 but nobody did it again for almost 30 years. 2 QBs did it last year, and a 3rd was less than 100 yards short.
So yeah, football isn’t the clawing and scratching for every inch game it once was, and what I think rugby still largely is. I know rugby has evolved too but doesn’t have the air attack stuff that the NFL has pretty much built their whole model around now. Running backs used to be the stars of the league and not that long ago. Not anymore.
And yes I do get whet you’re saying. If they actually took all pads and helmets out of football but continued to play, the game and players would adjust and ultimately it would be safer and there would be fewer traumatic injuries I’m sure.
And the league would probably have like 6 teams and they’d show the games at 10pm on Tuesday nights after reruns of Walker Texas Ranger.

Oh yeah I totally agree with that. Nobody would watch it, it wouldn't even be the same sport. It'd be unrecognizable. I just think they're right, it would probably be much safer.

Like I said, I was in medic school when Junior killed himself and asked them to donate his brain to science for CTE research. The NFL definitely fucked up in a PR sense denying it was a thing, I don't think that's even debatable. It was like how the military denied PTSD existed for decades. Now they're scrambling to to engineer better helmets, etc.

Now I don't think they should try to stop making safer gear. We agree the game would be safer with no padding but that's obviously never going to happen. And they should absolutely continue to make better helmets and whatnot. In my opinion though, what they should do is work on educating new players.

You're going onto a field with extremely athletic, freakish men who are going to literally run into you as fast as you can. You're young and right out of college and probably not that mature (not exactly what I would say to them). We want to make sure that you understand you could get significant brain damage.

That's what you're signing up for. Like I said, it'd be like if I went into the military and was like "we need to make getting shot safer." Or if like when I was a fighter competitively and was like "we need to find a better way to get punched in the head." I'd say the best thing to do would be to educate kids as soon as they get into football, just like when I got into fighting, on exactly what they're signing up for. If you want to do it, cool. But you're going to take a beating.