This goes right along with my biggest gripe on how QBs are being coddled. A good number of today's QBs are strong and very mobile, even the ones who don't necessarily have a ton of rushing yards.
If these QBs are going to fight with everything they have to escape the tackle, how can you expect defensive players to take it easy on them?
Also, how many times have we seen QBs sneak in extra yards because they know defenses have been trained to ease up on them. Like that Kenny Pickett fake slide during last year's college football season.
I'm all for QB safety but there needs to be some mutual respect for the rules from the QBs end as well.
It’s obvious the NFL doesn’t give a shit about equality for offense vs defense when it comes to QB safety. Slowly but surely, the NFL will continue to legislate out various ways QBs can be injured. They’ve taken extreme spectrum hits and legislated out, almost in exaggerated form, the subdued versions of them
- Prevent helmet-to-QB helmet spearing (or Wilbur Marshall on Aikman) has been extended to a bare hand, open hand grazes of QB helmet or essentially any defensive helmet face mask contact above a QBs shoulder
- Prevent a 250LBer diving full force at Carson Palmer’s knees has been extended to wrapping arms around QBs ankles
- Landing on QBs, last second QB slides, forceful shoves at the sideline, etc
The NFL’s response to the increased difficulty for defense, ie unfairness, has nothing to do with restoring fairness. NFL will unashamedly continue to make playing defense harder. Instead, their response is ‘well, your QB can get away with the same stuff too, so tell your offense to go score a TD’. NFL prefers an unbalanced, unfair-to-defense game with score 38-35 than a balanced fair game of 13-17…in NFLs defense, because that’s what casual fans want.