Scrimmage: Man Down! Football is Dangerous! By Gene W. Edwards. Posted 1/7/2024.

If you play football in the NFL, there is an almost 100% chance you will suffer injuries. If you’re lucky, you can resume football after you recover. Many NFL players only last one season, or part of one. They weren’t tough enough, fast enough, didn’t know how to win under pressure, or they sustained a crippling injury, including from concussions. Yeah, hockey’s tough, so is rugby, basketball, even baseball, etc. The strong get through it, get over it. The rest fail.

Football now has a 17-game season. They tried going to a 20-game season; too many injuries. They settled on 17 games, plus the post-season playoffs, instead of 16 games.

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Now here’s probably what you didn’t know. Actual scrimmage is low or nonexistent when the players are in practice. It’s actually flag football. Players run their patterns until they’re second nature while their same-team opponents try to stop them by pulling that little flag out. What team could afford to do full scrimmage in practice when star teams are lucky if key players are not injured — costing a team a title — when in official play, those 32 NFL teams. Imagine running full-tilt down a football field and running “head”long into a human Mack Truck running at the same speed the other way? It’s a miracle they don’t all get killed, 53 players on each NFL team, all looking for the same wins and dollars.