Ravens safety Bernard Pollard believes the logical extension of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s emphasis on player safety is to turn professional football into flag football.
Asked in an interview on KILT what he thinks the commissioner’s ultimate goal is, Pollard answered, “From what I see, we’re gonna be running around with helmets and flags on in about seven years.”
Pollard said Goodell went way too far in his punishments for the Saints’ bounty program, and he said Goodell is fundamentally changing the game.
“It’s getting out of hand,” Pollard said, via SportsRadioInterviews.com. “This is not powderpuff football, this is not flag football. This is a violent sport. And it’s a fun sport — we all love playing this game. And we’re blessed by God to even go out there and display our talent to the world, but at the same time you can’t sit there and say, ‘We want guts, we want glory, we want heart.’ You can’t give a player heart but at the end of the day you tell him, ‘Well, hold on but be careful when you go to make that hit.’ We wear helmets and shoulder pads. That means you’re supposed to go knock somebody around. We ain’t wearing flags.”
Pollard added that he believes Goodell simply doesn’t understand what it’s like to be a defensive player in the NFL.
“If you’ve never played the game, you can’t tell me what it’s like,” Pollard said. “You can’t tell me what to do.”
Actually, Goodell can tell Pollard what to do. But Pollard doesn’t have to like it.
