Pittsburgh Steelers OLB James Harrison embraced the role of villain when in 2010 the NFL targeted him for illegal hits, even as teammates such as Ryan Clark defended him. The league began cracking down on certain egregious hits on defenseless players, including quarterbacks, as it faced mounting pressure, as well as lawsuits, for the violence within the game.
In the same game against the Cleveland Browns in 2010, Harrison concussed two players. The league determined one to be legal because the player in question was a runner. We began to familiarize ourselves with the concept of a “defenseless receiver” in the aftermath.
“It’s a sad day for the sport”, King quoted Clark as saying 14 years ago. “The league has made James Harrison a villain for playing exactly the way he played to earn the Defensive Player of the Year award [in 2008]. I think what we’re seeing is a knee-jerk reaction to the result of the hits, not a thoughtful reaction to the reality of the hits”.
Many years later, King believes “Those comments have not aged well”, he wrote in his Football Morning in America column. He noted the suicides of former players such as Dave Duerson and Junior Seau—both defensive players. Autopsies revealed evidence of CTE in the brains of each.
He also reminded, as he did in his original column, that the league’s crackdown began not long after former Rutgers player Eric LeGrand suffered an injury on the field that left him paralyzed on a kickoff. The rules for kickoffs have undergone numerous changes since then to reduce the violence of the game.
But I’m not sure many fans agree that Clark’s comments about Harrison have aged poorly. Harrison still defends his hits. Even acknowledging the fact that player safety is inherently valuable, there is still something to mourn. The NFL has slowly but significantly changed the game of football over the past 14 years. It is still recognizable, but sometimes a good deal more tedious, particularly due to officiating intervention.
I’m sure I wouldn’t have to put in much effort to find King criticizing officials for absurd roughing-the-passer calls. In fact, I went ahead and did just that. In 2018 he interviewed veteran NFL official Terry McAulay. He wrote, “McAulay shares my belief that the league is totally out of control on roughing-the-passer”.
Even he knows, then, that the game is far from perfect, even if it is safer. The NFL is no closer to a balance of sanity on officiating roughing penalties in the five years since. But there is also more to Clark’s comments, only the first line of which he included in his latest article.
He pointed to the fact that Harrison did not change the way he played, nor did the rules change, but the manner in which the officials governed him did. He played just as violently in 2008, for which he earned the Defensive Player of the Year Award. For the same sort of play two years later, he racked up heavy fines. Eventually, he even served a one-game suspension.
Players who played the game a certain way all their lives were never going to seamlessly adjust to being officiated differently, and doing so in-season only exacerbates the difficulties. You don’t spend a great deal of time working on honing fundamentals during the regular season.
I don’t know if that was a sad day for football. I’m sure there are many who do, including our readers. But I do know that it put defenders in a no-win situation without appropriate planning. Coaching has largely adjusted, but you can never legislate violence out of the game and still call it football.
