- Messages
- 79,278
- Reaction score
- 45,637
Posted by Mike Florio on July 19, 2009 7:34 AM ET
One of the biggest -- yet most overlooked -- areas of uncertainty as the coming football season approaches relates to the reality that, as of 2009, the only wedge permitted in football will involve yanking a rookie's undershorts as high up his back as the material will allow.
The NFL has banned the wedge maneuver on kickoff returns earlier this year.
Sort of.
Technically, the new rule prohibits three or more players from lining up shoulder-to-shoulder within two yards of each other. And this means that mutiple groups of two players can still do it, as long as there's at least two yards between each of the two-man formations.
"There's a lot of gray area," Bears special teams coordinator Dave Toub said earlier this year. "It's going to be tough to officiate. They say it's two yards, but how long do they have to be together? Can you form two two-man wedges now? I've got a lot of questions. We'll have the officials come in [to training camp] and explain it to us."
In our view, the manner in which the rule is enforced will help the teams better understand how to comply with it. And that really won't be known until games are played and flags are thrown -- or not thrown -- in response to the new tactics that teams will use.
Still, it's hard enough for an official to determine in real time whether a player gets two feet down at the edge of the field after catching a pass. How will the men in black and white figure out whether three or more players "intentionally" are gathering within two yards of each other horizontally in the middle of the human food processor that unfolds as one team tries to advance the ball after a kickoff -- and the other team tries to stop it?
Regardless, the days of the full-blown, hand-in-hand, three-or-more-body arrowhead formation have ended. And some of the guys who were charged with the duty of disrupting the mass of humanity are happy about that.
"Probably half the time I've been a wedge guy," Ravens' Pro Bowl special-teamer Brendan Ayenbadejo tells the Baltimore Sun. "I'm not too fond of going against the wedge. I'm not too fond of it just because the wedge is a thing you have to honor. So I can't just run around it or run by it. I have to engage."
Naturally, however, Ravens special teams coordinator Jerry Rosburg shies away from acknowledging that players like Ayanbadejo were/are used as flesh-and-bone-and-blood battering rams.
"I can only speak for us," Rosburg told the Sun, "but I think it's safe to say special teams coaches are not throwing guys in there with the idea we can sacrifice them. That's not the way the game is coached. These are human beings we're coaching.
"You're not necessarily launching yourself [into another player], you're trying to get into creases and use up blockers and make the ball go one way or the other."
We think it's a matter of semantics. With overgrown men achieving a full head of steam and encountering a group of overgrown men who have banded together to form a wall of protection aimed at springing the guy who has the ball, the player charged with disrupting the formation likely feels like he's being sacrificed.
And those guys will still feel like they're being sacrificed, regardless of whether three or more players can stand shoulder to shoulder or whether they can now do it in only groups of two.
"I don't think it's going to protect guys as much as they think is going to happen," Commanders special teams player Rock Cartwright previously told the Washington Post.
And we agree. Though the obvious goal of the rule is to prevent serious injuries like the one that ended the career of Bills tight end Kevin Everett in Week One of the 2007 season, the reality is that, while Everett was a wedge buster, his injury didn't occur while he was busting a wedge.
"They just didn't block me," Everett told Tim Layden of Sports Illustrated in December 2007.
And so Everett had a clean shot at the man returning the ball, Domenik Hixon, who at the time played for the Broncos.
Everett's helmet crashed into the side of Hixon's, resulting in the neck injury that sent Everett to the turf, motionless.
So while banning the three-or-more-man wedge might help, it doesn't address the more fundamental reality that a kickoff return necessarily sets the stage for violent collisions, since one or both players hitting each other have a chance to build up a significant amount of momentum before impact.
Whether that's happening with one man slamming into a group of four, as a wedge buster does, or two players engaging each other with no one else around, as Everett and Hixon did, the potential for serious injury remains.
Thus, it could be that the rule will impact the overall game primarily by making it easier to get to the man with the ball, thereby hampering starting field position and potentially triggering a decrease in scoring.
And if that happens, the league will have to find a way to address the situation, possibly by moving the kickoff point back to the 25 yard line.
Which would give the men covering the kicks even more of an opportunity to build up a head of steam before crashing into another player.
One of the biggest -- yet most overlooked -- areas of uncertainty as the coming football season approaches relates to the reality that, as of 2009, the only wedge permitted in football will involve yanking a rookie's undershorts as high up his back as the material will allow.
The NFL has banned the wedge maneuver on kickoff returns earlier this year.
Sort of.
Technically, the new rule prohibits three or more players from lining up shoulder-to-shoulder within two yards of each other. And this means that mutiple groups of two players can still do it, as long as there's at least two yards between each of the two-man formations.
"There's a lot of gray area," Bears special teams coordinator Dave Toub said earlier this year. "It's going to be tough to officiate. They say it's two yards, but how long do they have to be together? Can you form two two-man wedges now? I've got a lot of questions. We'll have the officials come in [to training camp] and explain it to us."
In our view, the manner in which the rule is enforced will help the teams better understand how to comply with it. And that really won't be known until games are played and flags are thrown -- or not thrown -- in response to the new tactics that teams will use.
Still, it's hard enough for an official to determine in real time whether a player gets two feet down at the edge of the field after catching a pass. How will the men in black and white figure out whether three or more players "intentionally" are gathering within two yards of each other horizontally in the middle of the human food processor that unfolds as one team tries to advance the ball after a kickoff -- and the other team tries to stop it?
Regardless, the days of the full-blown, hand-in-hand, three-or-more-body arrowhead formation have ended. And some of the guys who were charged with the duty of disrupting the mass of humanity are happy about that.
"Probably half the time I've been a wedge guy," Ravens' Pro Bowl special-teamer Brendan Ayenbadejo tells the Baltimore Sun. "I'm not too fond of going against the wedge. I'm not too fond of it just because the wedge is a thing you have to honor. So I can't just run around it or run by it. I have to engage."
Naturally, however, Ravens special teams coordinator Jerry Rosburg shies away from acknowledging that players like Ayanbadejo were/are used as flesh-and-bone-and-blood battering rams.
"I can only speak for us," Rosburg told the Sun, "but I think it's safe to say special teams coaches are not throwing guys in there with the idea we can sacrifice them. That's not the way the game is coached. These are human beings we're coaching.
"You're not necessarily launching yourself [into another player], you're trying to get into creases and use up blockers and make the ball go one way or the other."
We think it's a matter of semantics. With overgrown men achieving a full head of steam and encountering a group of overgrown men who have banded together to form a wall of protection aimed at springing the guy who has the ball, the player charged with disrupting the formation likely feels like he's being sacrificed.
And those guys will still feel like they're being sacrificed, regardless of whether three or more players can stand shoulder to shoulder or whether they can now do it in only groups of two.
"I don't think it's going to protect guys as much as they think is going to happen," Commanders special teams player Rock Cartwright previously told the Washington Post.
And we agree. Though the obvious goal of the rule is to prevent serious injuries like the one that ended the career of Bills tight end Kevin Everett in Week One of the 2007 season, the reality is that, while Everett was a wedge buster, his injury didn't occur while he was busting a wedge.
"They just didn't block me," Everett told Tim Layden of Sports Illustrated in December 2007.
And so Everett had a clean shot at the man returning the ball, Domenik Hixon, who at the time played for the Broncos.
Everett's helmet crashed into the side of Hixon's, resulting in the neck injury that sent Everett to the turf, motionless.
So while banning the three-or-more-man wedge might help, it doesn't address the more fundamental reality that a kickoff return necessarily sets the stage for violent collisions, since one or both players hitting each other have a chance to build up a significant amount of momentum before impact.
Whether that's happening with one man slamming into a group of four, as a wedge buster does, or two players engaging each other with no one else around, as Everett and Hixon did, the potential for serious injury remains.
Thus, it could be that the rule will impact the overall game primarily by making it easier to get to the man with the ball, thereby hampering starting field position and potentially triggering a decrease in scoring.
And if that happens, the league will have to find a way to address the situation, possibly by moving the kickoff point back to the 25 yard line.
Which would give the men covering the kicks even more of an opportunity to build up a head of steam before crashing into another player.
