Injuries And The NFL's Not So Secret Dirty Little Secret

I hate the Patriots and Belicheat, but I’ll root for them for the SB.

…we noticed the shots at Delanie’s helmet, too. Sparked a spirited debate about whether it was appropriate to “sweep the leg,” so to speak.

But teams have been doing this since teams have been forced to release injury reports.

Despicable or not, to think teams won’t exploit every legal possibility to increase their odds of winning is naivety (which you said)

Teams did the same thing to Tuck when his neck was hurting

A weakness will be attacked no matter the opponent, it’s wise for the opposition to do so. If Williams or Walker were that big of injury risk, they would not have played. The Giants were penalized twice on illegal hands to the face, were either of those penalties called on Williams or Walker (I can’t recall)?

Obviously when targeting a player’s head, it’s outside the rules of the NFL, so in this case it’s a bit of grey area to target injuries. If the injuries were not related to either player’s head, I doubt we’d even have this discussion. I mean, I’d target a player’s arm or leg if I knew it was susceptible to injury. You can’t really target a player’s head without going outside of the rules (unless of course that player has already established himself as a runner and isn’t defenseless).

The bottom line is, the 49ers lost this game. It wasn’t because the Giants players are cheap or dirty, it was because the 49ers converted one [site decorum]ing third down all [site decorum]ing game. There are many things that could have been different in this game, and the least affect on the outcome were Giants players targeting Walker and Williams.

But Kyle, when you call Peter on a punt, stay the [site decourm] away from it in any future scenario.

Football is a money making business and highly competitive, to take advantage of any injury to get a edge is going to happen by most players and coaches. If anything injury reports should be kept secret to keep the playing field more balanced. If you know a player opposite of you has a injury, your going to take advantage of that to improve your performance.
The only way around it is to punish players for illegal hits, players with recent injuries shouldn’t be playing if a recent injury inhibits their ability to play.

Add an additional layer of depth to gameplanning.

I didn’t see any particularly dirty play by the Giants. This is pro football. Players will be hit where it hurts them most in order to take them out. It doesn’t matter if the hit is “clean” or in an injured area of the body. The point is to take the player out of the game.

Tim Ryan apparently commented well before the game that Kyle Wllliams had a “deer in a headlight” look about him. If a TV analyst can sense that a player may not going be able to handle a situation that is too big for him, rest assured that the other team will have come to the same conclusion from their scouting, whatever the reason for Williams’ inability to deal with the moment was.

“The battle is won before it is fought”: Sun Tzu

I’ve lived in Connecticut for the past ten years. That’s just New York sports for you. By any means necessary; and that usually involves dirty play like that. It’s also kind of a Boston thing. The Patriots play cleaner but Bruins and Celtics want you to get emotional when you play them. And if they can get you out of the game by luring you into a fight, hurting you or faking injuries, they will.

Delanie playing was irresponsible in the first place. Going after Kyles concussion is the norm. If you’re a fighter in combat against another fighter that has a history of being knocked out you’re going to use that to your advantage and try to have him carried out again.

The only thing I consider dirty in this regard is going after a guys knees shortly after returning from a knee injury.