The Greedy Scheduling Cocktail with Deadly Consequences

Damar Hamlin has suffered a one-in-a-million shot of an injury that has nearly cost him his life, let’s get that point across above all else. This wasn’t just a rough hit, it was an unfortunate hit that literally stripped him of his life until the paramedics could get the heart beating again.

It’s a terrible moment for a league that quite frankly has been very lucky to see that tragedies like this don’t happen more often. They made the right move in suspending the game, and potentially even outright cancelling it altogether if Sunday’s games produce results that would bar this particular matchup meaningless. The National Football League is frustrating as hell, but they made the right move here, zero chance the game can continue for at least another week and not until we have word that Hamlin will make it out of this alive.

That being said, enough with the rolling of the dice, because everyone involved with the concept of professional football has outright failed these players in providing the best situation possible.

The League itself still insists on Thursday Night Football, and even gambled a little extra with additional Saturday games before the playoffs even started. ALL teams now will have these weeks where teams have to send their athletes to battle each other -twice- in a span of five days. Let’s not forget their efforts to expanding the season to 17 and (eventually, we all know this happens eventually) 18 games under -expanded- playoffs.

The Sports Networks also insists on having these standalone games more often to drive up profits and ratings, when during the safer days we only had one game outside the Sunday range each week before Thanksgiving. In the past few seasons, we’ve now had regular season matchups in Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays on top of the reliable Sunday. As a result, we’ve been seeing more injuries, more intense concussions, and less recovery time between matchups. Imagine a MMA where fighters had less time to recover before having to defend their titles, the results would be disastrous.

The Teams are letting down their players, and the best example in recent times happened with Tua Tagovialoa also nearly dying on the football field after having to play the Bengals five days after a brutal game against the Bills (which saw him stumbling a bit). Tua got two concussions in five days because the Dolphins stupidly didn’t give him time to rest (which I was furious about before the terrible injury where his hands clamped up even happened), which comes after the NFL even more stupidly scheduled such a combination of games for Miami to play.

Lastly, the Player’s Association has also let down the players by agreeing to more games, agreeing to more scrambled schedules and less recovery time without more financial compensation, without more weeks off, and without more pushing for safer measures. NFL wants 17 games? Fine, but the players should only play -15- games max, which would allow for expanded rosters and more time off for all the players participating. Want us to play Thursday Night Football? Fine, but absolutely no other games that week or the next. Make it work somehow.

The cardiac arrest has no culprit, but the elevated amount of dice-rolling that sometimes ends in these deadly snake eyes are the fault of everyone involved with the NFL by letting it reach this point. You can’t tell me its just a coincidence that as we’ve seen more non-Sunday games and more short rest, we also saw Tua AND Damar nearly die on the football field in the SAME season.

Less recovery means more lingering fatigue, more lingering injuries, and it makes these players targets and more susceptible to tragedies and more intense consequences. Lost in all the recent news is a Dolphins quarterback who might actually never be the same after the Thursday Night concussion. All of this can be avoided if the league, players, and unions actually develop a more proper plan on how these seasons play out. Its already a violent sport as it is, there’s zero need to add to the dangers with these half-baked safety measures.

Fix this NFL, enough is enough. These players deserve significantly better, and its time we become louder against the changes that has put profits over the safety of players.