Posted on September 4th, 2015
By DERON SNYDER
Is it over yet?
It’s hard to tell when you’ve been hunched over, eyes closed and your head in your hands, scared to look up because who-knows-what else might be coming next.
It’s hard to tell whether the nation’s laughter has stopped for good or everyone is just catching their breath, wafting for the next joke.
It’s hard to tell after the local NFL franchise has become an even bigger punching bag this week, absorbing enough head shots to warrant the concussion protocol.
Fans at FedEx Field Thursday night witnessed the fourth and, mercifully, final preseason game. Players on each sideline battled for final spots on the roster – or the practice squad at worse – with Jacksonville’s would-be reserves beating Washington’s would-be reserves, 17-16.
But more importantly than the final score or which players were Nos. 48-53, the exhibition season has reached its conclusion.
Thank goodness the NFL doesn’t play five such games.
The news cycle might’ve blown a fuse if Washington had another week to practice its dysfunction.
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Posted on September 2nd, 2015
By DERON SNYDER
The NBA is looking forward to Christmas Day, when a Finals rematch between LeBron James’ Cavaliers and Stephon Curry’s Warriors highlights a five-game showcase.
The NFL is circling Dec. 25, too, but with dread. That’s the release date for “Concussion,” a movie that will give the league a headache and black eye.
After the trailer debuted Monday on Sports Illustrated’s MMQB website, folks began talking about Will Smith as an Oscar candidate. Smith plays Dr. Bennet Omalu, the real-life pathologist who discovered chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
In response to the buzz, including reports that filmmakers altered the movie to appease the NFL, out trotted Jeff Miller, the league’s senior vice president of health and safety policy.
“We are encouraged by the ongoing focus on the critical issue of player health and safety,” he said in a statement Tuesday, apparently eying the Academy Award for Best Damage Control. “We have no higher priority.”
Guess he’s never heard of Deflategate?
The NFL’s first, second and third order of business is to protect “The Shield” and the $10 billion in revenue it produces. To achieve that goal, fan interest must remain high and player defection must stay low. In others words, the league wants eyeballs and fewer Chris Borlands.
“Concussion” could threaten both goals.
It’s not that Omalu’s story is new; he was featured in an 8,700-word GQ article six years ago. It’s not that CTE is a foreign concept; the neurodegenerative disease has been likened to boxing’s dementia pugilistica. It’s not that tragic repercussions for former players such as Junior Seau, Dave Duerson and Jovan Belcher are unnoticed; wrangling over a $900 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit continues.
But something about movies strikes a chord like nothing else.
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Posted on September 1st, 2015
By DERON SNYDER
I played my first and only season of organized football after high school, as a 17-year-old junior college student on a local club team.
Back then in the early ‘80s, a few NFL players were wearing gloves and wristbands adorned with a triangle logo, making a really cool fashion statement. I brought a pair of the gloves, leather-like and slick with no sense of feel as the ball arrived. If anything, the gloves made catching a little more difficult.
But I looked good.
Nowadays, gloves are as common as cleats and mouthguards. These gloves not only add sartorial splendor to uniforms, they help receivers make spectacular grabs like the one-handed doozy last year by the New York Giants Odell Beckham Jr.
Beckham graces the cover of EA Sports’ Madden 2016, looking like a hoops star doing a finger roll. Except he’s hauling in a football – not laying up a basketball – with with his outstretched left hand. It would be another insane reception if we saw it in real life.
Maybe he’ll replicate it in two weeks on Sunday Night Football against Dallas, the team he victimized in November for perhaps the greatest catch ever.
I’ve never given much thought to the benefits of modern gloves, which have “tackified” fingers and palm areas for a surer, more-secure grip when catching the ball. But considering how the NFL’s uniform code is roughly 4,000 words (with nearly 400 devoted to shoes alone), I’m shocked to discover Roger Goodell and the Masters of Minutia have left gloves largely unregulated.
“No one looks at those gloves,” John Madden told the Los Angeles Times in a story Sunday. “I saw them when I was at a meeting in Indy. They passed them around and somebody made the comment that, ‘Pretty soon, these gloves are going to be able to catch a ball without a hand in them.’”
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