Home >  Sports >  Notebooks

Sunday, November 10, 2002

By Ed Bouchette, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

Here's a suggestion for NFL executives: Ban the facemask, make them all wear pads and instead of showing bone-crunching hits in network promos, put on the cheerleaders.

Safeties across the league, including the Steelers' Lee Flowers, are incensed over the recent fines levied by the NFL because of various hits delivered by safeties on receivers.

Flowers even suggested that it's just another way for the league to increase scoring by giving the offense another advantage.

It harkens back to the days when Jack Lambert suggested they put skirts on quarterbacks because of new rules designed to protect them.

Somehow, the NFL survived the rules they passed then and the crackdowns since then on helmet-to-helmet hits and the like to become the most popular sport on television. It's nothing new. President Teddy Roosevelt threatened to ban the sport in the early 1900s if rules weren't passed and enforced to make it safer.

They could actually go back in time in order to make the game safer and achieve their goals of reducing helmet-to-helmet hits: Get rid of the facemask. Before facemasks and cages were strapped on the front of helmets, few players would stick their noses into someone else's helmet or launch themselves into another player to make a tackle. They did not want to readjust their face.

They also could enforce the rules about wearing pads. Players today don't wear hip pads or thigh pads so they can play lighter, can run faster and launch themselves higher. Stick the pads on, though, and it would slow the game down and no self-respecting NFL honcho wants that to happen.

"We don't know what they want," Flowers said. "We can hit a guy on the shoulder, your facemask might graze across their helmet and that's helmet to helmet. I thought about it this past weekend. I'm trying to set a tempo for the game but I can't, I can't hit a guy coming across the middle anymore. In the past, there was no thought about the ball coming across the middle. I was hoping that would happen. Now, it's how can I get this guy down without leading with my head."

Steelers safety Mike Logan said he, too, pulled up on a play against Indianapolis Oct. 21, mindful of a play in the exhibition season in which he was penalized for putting his helmet into the midsection of the quarterback.

"I had a free shot at Peyton Manning," Logan said, "and I tried to go to the side and he avoided me. Fortunately, he got sacked by someone else, but I was thinking of it as I was rushing. When you are thinking about it, one slight move and he can get away and it almost cost us."

Flowers believes the rules inevitably will cause more receivers to run free through secondaries without fear of getting hit, thus aiding the offenses.

"Every year you come into training camp and the refs come in and they get out the rules changes, every rule change this year -- except for one -- has been for offense, to see more points.

"Pass interference right now? Five years ago you could maul the guy going down the sideline. Now you can't even fight for position on the field anymore.

"I've never seen more points. Every week, three or four teams, 40 points or more. There have been games where 80 points were scored. If something's not done, you're going to see basketball scores, like the Arena League."

Nothing galls them more, though, than to see themselves fined or suspended, then watch as the NFL or one of its networks uses the hit or similar hits to promote the game. CBS did that last week, showing a hit San Diego's Rodney Harrison put on receiver Jerry Rice that got Harrison suspended for a game. They used it to promote last Sunday's Chargers-Jets game.

"I just think if you outlaw the hit but you use it to promote the league, I don't think it's a good situation because, what are you telling people?" Harrison said. "You're telling people that it's not OK to go out there and hit people and play real physical, but it's OK to get the fans riled up with it. I just don't understand it."

Said Flowers, "Give me $50,000 back since you're promoting it. You're going to take $124,000 from me, give me $50,000 back. Let's make a business deal out of it."