Originally posted by dj43:
Originally posted by Niners99:
I remember back in the day when like maybe 2-3 guys per year would suffer season ending injuries, but otherwise everyone toughed it out. Now everyone gets hurt constantly and has to sit out 3 weeks for a hangnail.
Hearing older players like Aaron Rodgers talk about how hard the training camps used to be, and how comfortable they are now gives me little hope for the future of the game. The game is soft now. All these NFLPA regulations that require no contact and extra time off. Sports in general has babied athletes, fretting over how much money they have invested in them and player safety PR, yet they're getting hurt more than ever before.
Those guardian helmets actually being used in games now is insane.
Health and fitness training has changed the game as much as anything. Fifty years ago, kids would have to go down to the local gym and lift weights by themselves, then grab a burger on the way home. Now, even high schools have weight rooms that the pros of the 70's would envy. The size and fitness of guys now had made for much more violent collisions and injury potential. If today's players practiced as much with pads as they did even in the 90s, roster size would have to be increased to 60+ to have enough players to last the season.
That still doesn't account for all the non-contact stuff. The modern NFL player would file a lawsuit against the league if they had to do two-a-days in camp. Football used to be like military boot camp. They built up a callous. Players now don't spend enough time conditioning their muscles for contact because everyone is afraid of sustaining injuries outside the actual games that matter.
The league is definitely faster and benefits from modern training and nutrition, but they have also changed the rules dramatically so you are barely allowed to hit anymore. How is it that in a league where they have made almost every way to make contact illegal, that players get hurt the most often? Guys used to be encouraged to end opposing players' seasons, because that was the mindset, yet they got injured less.
