With the NFL instantly -- and wisely -- responding to Sunday’s rash of headhunting with a vow to use suspensions even for first-time offenders, we still think that the process needs to be taken one step farther.
Players need to be ejected from games after delivering a big hit.
As pointed out in this week’s Monday 10-pack, the league instructed officials in 2007 to begin ejecting players for flagrant helmet-to-helmet hits. And yet not a single player has been ejected in the past three years.
The fines and suspensions can come later. The most immediate way to take control of a game in which players begin using their helmets as weapons will be to send the offending player to the showers -- and to put the other 89 players on notice that they could be next.
The approach creates a real challenge for game officials, who already have their hands full without having to filter out in real time the bang-bang moments (as coaches like Andy Reid of the Eagles calls them) involving possible helmet-to-helmet hits and/or helmet-first launches.
So here’s our next suggestion. Empower the replay official to buzz down to the referee and alert him to the fact that a hit has occurred that compels ejection or, at a minimum, a closer look at the video of the hit before making a final decision.
Or why not take it a step farther and assign for each game a “safety official” who has one job -- scan the game and replays for evidence of illegal hits? Though the protocol for penalties and replay reviews creates a sense that all decisions must be made before the next snap, why require such immediacy when it comes to the question of whether a player unreasonably has endangered the safety of another player? Though fans may bristle at the notice of a guy getting a dance-contest style tap on the shoulder several minutes or longer after doing his version of the brainscrambler, the question of whether a guy needs to be ejected shouldn’t have to be made in 40 seconds.
Why not also loop in the league office? I’ve seen the room from which 280 Park Avenue monitors the games, with one person studying each and every contest and V.P. of officiating Carl Johnson supervising the operation. It shouldn’t be difficult to create a process that would permit illegal hits to be quickly and efficiently reviewed for a potential ejection.
And even if it’s difficult, the league should still do it.
