If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a lifelong football fan, it’s that the NFL does nothing in moderation. All preseason, officiating crews flagged helmet to helmet shots with abandon, turning fans, coaches, players alike against the new points of emphasis. Plays on which not a single party was struck in the head were being flagged as head shots. They tried to do a good thing, and wound up doing too much.
So what did the NFL do next? It caved completely, of course. The drastic changes to the fiber of the game which many feared after the preseason never came to fruition.