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By DAVE GOLDBERG | Associated Press
“See what you hit,” reads the sign affixed to the walls of all 32 NFL locker rooms along with a picture of a tackle being made the head down. Around the picture is a circle with a diagonal line, the international symbol for “not allowed.”
Replays show Kevin Everett, a special teams player for the Buffalo Bills, appeared to see what he was hitting when he tackled Denver’s Domenik Hixon on the opening kickoff of the second half against Denver on Sunday.
Still, it still didn’t prevent him from incurring a severe spinal injury.
Sadly, he most likely won’t be the last to get hurt making a tackle or being tackled. Football, particularly the NFL, is a violent sport played by huge men moving very fast. When they collide, bad things can happen.
Dick Jauron, Everett’s coach, acknowledged as much on Monday.
He even discussed something macho NFL players don’t readily acknowledge, the fear that comes with playing a violent game.
“Having been fortunate enough to play the game and having coached it for a number of years, you don’t go into it without knowing that something can happen,” said Jauron, who played safety for Detroit and Cincinnati for eight years. “It isn’t something they (players) haven’t thought about at some time during their careers.”
It is something the people who make the rules in the NFL have thought about.
Every spring, the competition committee, which makes and tweaks rules, emphasizes that player safety is at the top of the agenda.
“When you teach tackling, blocking, you teach techniques to try to avoid these kind of incidents because you know that it is a vulnerable part of the body,” Jauron said Monday. “We could not, in my opinion, stress it any more than we do, the proper way to tackle.”
These things have happened in the past, the saddest and most notable the collision in a 1978 exhibition game in Oakland between Jack Tatum of the Raiders and Darryl Stingley of the Patriots. Stingley’s neck was broken, he was left a quadriplegic, and he died at age 55 last April, in part from the effects of the injury.
Reggie Brown of the Lions almost died on the field when he was injured during the final game of the 1997 season. He had a spinal injury and recovered but never played again.
Another Lion, Mike Utley, wasn’t as lucky.
He was paralyzed from the waist down during a game in 1991. He has since become an advocate for the disabled and understands the risks of playing football.
“Was it an accident? Yes. It wasn’t a cheap shot,” Utley said. “It was a great form tackle and that’s it. Is it going to happen more? Yes.”
Sad to say, he’s probably right.
