Ed Reed Suggets the Only Way to Eliminate Concussions from Football is End the Sport

Ed Reed was originally supposed to miss this weekend’s game against the San Diego Chargers due to violating the NFL’s violent it to the head policy. Which states that if a player has had at least three hits of this nature resulting in fines in three consecutive seasons they will receive a one game suspension. Reed appealed the one game suspension and ended up winning forcing the NFL to realize this rule was a little bit to harsh leaving him with just a 50K fine.Today during an interview with ESPN Reed discussed the matter indicating how absurd these fines and possible suspension he avoided was. The premise of his argument being that hitting is part of football and simply cannot be removed unless you want the sport banned all together. “It really needs to be discussed for a fine to come down like that so harshly for that hit, over my career and for them to go back to 2010 for me scratching Drew Brees on the head, even the one that happened in Week 2 with Michael Vick, c’mon, man. I’m going for the ball. It’s a contact sport.”“It is tackle football, it is a contact sport and a brutal one, a violent one at that, the No. 1 violent sport, sad to say.”“I know concussions has been a big thing. I’ve had concussions before, and I know guys are going to have concussions. If you want to stop it, stop the game. Like people say, it’s starting to be a flag football thing. I have a flag football tournament. We can make this a big thing if we want to, everybody can come get in my league.”I couldn’t agree more with Reed and am thrilled he came out and made these comments publicly allowing everyone to understand the mindset of a pro bowl hall of fame DB. I have been preaching for years that hitting is inherent within the sport; it simply cannot be regulated to the extent Goodell is attempting to.So many times players are just trying to complete hits without the intention of specifically targeting the head area. The game is played at such a rapid speed players being forced to make difficult decisions in under a second. Sometimes they are left but no choice to hit the head. It’s beyond absurd how Goodell is trying to eliminate this by going completely overboard with fines and suspensions. Sure nobody wants to see players injured but the bottom line is it’s part of the sport. Nobody is forcing the players to choose this career path; they all know this stepping on the field.Another main factor the change from Goodell in terms of enforcing head hits has to do with current and potential future law suits. With all these former players wanting payouts from the league claiming they didn’t inform them of the potential damage football creates on their brains later on in life it’s caused Goodell to try and cover the league’s ass. This way by instituting a tougher system against these kind of hits when lawsuits are brought infront of a judge to decide how much players should be paid out it provides them with a picture that indicates the league cares and is doing everything within their power to keep things as clean as possible. Enough with this BS Goodell we know your logic behind all this.At this point Reed is correct the only way to keep football “safe” and eliminate concussions is abolish the sport all together. Suck it up players and get in the game; or don’t!!! Simply do NOT step on the field if you can’t handle the risks. The NFL should force these players to sign waivers when they come into the league which eliminates any possible future lawsuit. Then Goodell won’t be forced into coming up with all these ***** rules in regards to the way players are getting hit.