This team has a problem with health. To be clear, health is part of the grade. It’s not an excuse for coaches or bad records. Yes, it’s part of the game...a war of attrition, the ultimate winner usually finds an advantage in availability. Sure, I’ll give you that the Texans have been particularly unlucky. But I won’t use it as a blanket excuse. Rick Smith needs to draft tougher, more durable players. Clearly, clearly there is a strength/conditioning problem. Maybe a country club isn’t the best place for training. Is it OBrien forcing a professional effort instead of doing the prudent thing, bubble wrapping the season and calling it a day? Is his style putting people in the position to get hurt? Is it something players are just doing that they shouldn’t? Perhaps Fiedorowicz needs to protect himself. Maybe they could’ve had JJ on a playcount. Is Fuller just kind of a pansy? Is Kevin Johnson too frail? What is it? Seriously, what is it? I just find it hard to leave it up entirely to chance. Raze NRG and rebuild on land that wasn’t formerly Indian burial grounds. Find the coven of witches cursing us with hexes and dump water on them. And old priest and a young priest.... Honestly, I’m on a human level where I don’t want these guys just sacrificing themselves to satisfy commercial sponsors and viewers on a team so destined for the hospital. It’s like cows lining up to be slaughtered. I like hamburgers but damn....
I'm mind boggled by how skinny Kevin Johnson is every Sunday. Geez. He's very bad at football. Should try eating in a caloric surplus
Well...he definitely has pro level skills. Speed, length, willingness to tackle...but hey, he is as frail as anyone I’ve ever seen in the nfl. So that willingness is almost a detriment. He’s even flashed some coverage and has some attitude about it. All nice things in a vacuum but has to put it altogether And that involves being healthy enough to play and cash in on that potential. Seems like the Texans defense is counting on him to tackle too, where it’s becoming obvious that their system needs him in space making plays on the ball in the air instead of in a carrier’s grip.
It amazes me how fragile the team has been the past few years. They drop like flies weekly. How many starters do you think have played even a full season in the past 5 years? All our top draft picks have been hurt. I can't even imagine having a QB who has played over 200 straight starts when we can't even keep a QB healthy for a full season. I think it's more than bad luck. Muscles and tendons wound so tight they pop and tear too easily? Maybe something in all the "legal" doping supplements and stuff they take actually makes muscles and ligaments more prone to rip, strain, or bruise. Who knows. Maybe some of it is simply over coddling. I just find it hard to believe how many weeks some of the guys stay out for a strain or a sprain. Then again, I find it hard to believe someone as thin as Hopkins has outlasted some of the beefy guys who aren't tackled and thrown around like a rag doll.
NFL is brutal and unpredictable when it comes to injuries. The fact is humans that big shouldn't be able to move that fast, generating tremendous amounts of force in the process, but these guys can and that puts tremendous strain on the weakest areas of the human body. I've always said, if the NFL wants to survive they should ban "hitting" and only allow "tackling." That would allow them to scale back/down the "armor" which would remove the "weapon" factor.
They have 15 guys on IR including Newton and only count Fiedorowicz once, even though this makes his 2nd appearance on the list this year. Also not including Cushing or Brown who both played a single game this year. 17 players out, there’s 22 starters not including teams specialists. In 3 preseason and 12 regular season games. 15. 15 for 15. They are 100% in sending someone to the IR lol... This isn’t bruises and sore spots. This is season ending injuries. This isn’t guys sitting out of practice to help heal up. This is guys not on the field at all. This isn’t guys who had to sit out a couple games but were able to come back... This is amazing, really.
Uhhh yeah. I think I outlined that pretty well but I guess not... Actually wasn’t he tested because he was in concussion protocol? Possibility he was injured. Either way, he’s a major contributor to the team that missed most of the season. That’s all I was trying to say, on top of injuries we have Cushing and brown missing time.
It's just been a bad football year in general. Too many elite players are hurt, so many annoying and bad controversies, and the product just hasn't been overall good(more bad games than good games). It does seem the Texans have had the worst injury luck on the year, sometimes it just happens and sometimes the overall conditioning of the team is poor, I see it as alittle of both this year. Honestly I'm just ready for this football year to be over I'm on to next year.
Man, the hypocrisy in the NFL is crazy. I get that the Smith-Schuster hit on Burfict was illegal. I get that he taunted over an injured player. But it was football. The kid shouldn't have been suspended. If you suspend Juju, there's about ten other guys across the league that should be suspended each week. Let's start with whoever gave Braxton Miller that concussion. Dude wasn't even flagged. That's absurd.
Honestly, they should suspend all the players who make dirty hits for a min. of 3 games. That's the only way to start protecting players from needless concussions and other injuries. Money doesn't hurt most of these guys, so the fines are pretty pointless. Also, I don't know why the owners and players don't get together and change the rules to where the coaches can use their flag to review a dirty hit the refs "didn't see" with their blind eye turned away from the play. I never understood why only certain plays can be reviewed. Such a stupid rule.
I don't think Juju or Iloka should be suspended, to be honest. They were both plays that happened in a football game. Neither one seemed to be targeting or purposefully done. What Gronk did, however, was intentionally try to hurt someone, and succeed. That's messed up. He should be met with a multiple game suspension. For all three of those guys to be suspended for the same amount of time, to me, is asinine. I know they're trying to do the opposite, and I get it, but to me, the NFL is really hurting their product here.
Posted this in another thread but whoever is responsible for okaying injured players needs to be fired this morning. Ridiculous.
The most obvious simple solution, ban hitting; only allow tackling. If you did, you might still have some star players playing this season and certainly not have the amount of brutality we've seen recently. Ref it just like PIs which is completely subjective. Tackling with attempt to wrap up is good play but hitting with no attempt to wrap up is penalized. Would be bad calls and good calls just like PI but we all accept PIs as part of the game and have gotten used to it. our conscientious culture (which is a good thing) will end this game if they don't make changes just like the gladiator fighting was ended by a visiting, murdered, monk.
I posted this with my joke thread in the NBA forum but I actually think it's a really good idea for the NFL. I believe concussions, knee injuries and malicious acts would be extremely limited if this was in place: You injure a guy, you're out as long as he is... You give a guy a concussion on a dirty hit? You break a guy's knee ligaments going low or horsecollar tackling? Step on a guy's hand while he's in a pile? You get caught doing any of that dirty, injury inducing crap you sit as long as your victim sits. Bet, these guy's wallets on the line will have them becoming expert form tacklers.
I was in Houston a few weeks ago having brunch and Kevin Johnson walked into the restaurant, sat at the bar and ate by himself. No one else at the table watched football and could not believe that he was a professional athlete
Okay but what if someone hits someone like CJ? A player who seems to get a concussion every time he’s tackled
