The rise of Peyton Hillis was quick and he eventually landed on the cover of Madden 2012. He went from NFL unknown to well known at the kind of velocity rarely seen in football. As this happened, people around the sport waited. And waited some more.
They knew his running style -- part Larry Csonka, part Brandon Jacobs, and part bulldozer -- would lead to Hillis becoming injured faster than usual. But in the end it wasn't a devastating hit that leveled Hillis, it was a germ.
It was reported that teammates questioned if the contract dispute Hillis is having with the Browns was the real reason he didn't play against the Miami Dolphins. The agent for Hillis recently said he instructed Hillis to sit. All hell has since broken loose. One veteran player told me that he lost some respect for Hillis listening to his agent since it's the agent who works for Hillis, not vice versa.
Hillis wasn't alone in people questioning his motivations. The Giants' Justin Tuck has been suffering from groin and neck injuries. Tuck is one of the tougher players I've ever seen, but that toughness was questioned by ex-teammate and current ESPN analyst Antonio Pierce. Pierce was troll, troll, trolling his boat and took a very serious shot at Tuck's intestinal fortitude.
"To me, if you don't have an injury that needs surgery, or that's severe, you need to be out there," Pierce said. "If you are one of the leaders on the team, which Brandon Jacobs and Justin Tuck are, and you say, 'You know what, the Seattle Seahawks, maybe we don't need to play this game,' and you miss out, that is going to come back to bite you in the tail. You've got to play every one. Every one is important."
Except ... Pierce himself didn't play every one. He missed four games in 2005 because of an ankle sprain, one in 2008 because of a knee injury, and a herniated disc ended his career though he could have had corrective surgery to stay in the NFL. This isn't to say that those injuries weren't severe, but it is to say there was no former-player pundit questioning Pierce's heart. Indeed, Pierce was one of the most thin-skinned of Giants players who once did this in the locker room to reporters who were asking questions he didn't like.
At the time, Pierce ripped former Giants players -- yes, he was angry at former players in the media criticizing him -- as know-nothings who should mind their own business. Now, he's doing the same.
Tuck has since said he has forgiven Pierce, but I can tell you there are a few Giants players who didn't take kindly to what Pierce did the way Pierce didn't take kindly to former players ripping Pierce. I don't know if Pierce will be Tiki Barber'd by Giants players and fans, but what Pierce did wasn't received well by current players.
Both of those stories demonstrate the difficult position players are in when it comes to injuries. Though there has been great progress in the treatment of injured players by the league, there is still progress to be made on how injured players are treated by their current and ex-peers.
There is a fine line between injury and innuendo, and between guts and being careful not to worsen an injury. Some players seem to be confused about the location of that line.
What's most interesting about these fights is that once it was teams that put pressure on players to play. Now, it's more the players who do it.
Both the Giants and Browns organizations, I'm told, had no issues with either player missing their respective games. It was players and former players who did.
There is a degree of hypocrisy here beyond the obvious. Players have long complained about how teams treated injured players and ignored the long-term health damages caused by football. A large part of the recent labor fight was about player health and safety, leading to rules that decreased contact during practice.
If players want to continue to be taken seriously on these matters, they can't turn on each other like a pack of sharks once one of their own gets hurt.
Hillis at one point was forced to go to Twitter to plead his case. "If I could have physically played against the Dolphins I would have," he wrote.
Hillis shouldn't have to practically beg for people to believe him, and he definitely shouldn't have to beg his fellow players, who should know better.
2. Interesting tidbit on concussions: An NFL official tells me that reported concussions from this preseason were down 20 percent from last year. But the number of reported concussions is still higher than the three seasons before that (2007-09). The league isn't drawing any conclusions from these numbers, because the sample size from preseason was too small. But they are interesting nonetheless and might indicate that while players are more willing to report concussions, there still could be a segment of the player population that isn't.
3. I can definitely say that Aaron Rodgers is playing the position better than anyone now. And it's not even close. He's completing 80.5 percent of his aimed passes (removing throw-away passes, spikes and drops) which leads the NFL, according to Profootballballfocus.com. I can definitely say the way he's playing, it is historic. But I can't say he's playing it better than any quarterback ever has, a claim making its way around the sport, both in the media and inside locker rooms and front offices. The rules that Rodgers plays under now are so dramatically beneficial to him, and comparing what Rodgers does to, say, Johnny Unitas, is an exponentially different comparison.
As one league executive who is a fabulous football historian pointed out, players like Unitas and his receivers had to contend with defensive players who could hold, tackle and maim a receiver while he was running a route. Not to mention that on running plays, what receivers did in the 1960s and 1970s was borderline criminal. Paul Warfield, one of the most underrated receivers of all time, used the crackback block to devastating efficiency, wearing out defensive backs. The Dolphins were so vicious with it, the league soon outlawed it. Now, defensive players exhale too exuberantly on a player and yellow hankies fly about.
So while Rodgers is great, the quarterbacks like Unitas and other greats had to throw in much tighter windows. This isn't to say Rodgers wouldn't be able to, but now he just isn't required to. There's no way to judge how he would do under those previous rules, except with our imaginations.
4. Darius Heyward-Bey, the wide receiver from the Raiders widely viewed as a bust, might actually be able to ... well, play. Some scouts are starting to see on film the promise that Al Davis once did.
5. The thought of some across the NFL is that the Broncos bowed to public pressure in making Tim Tebow the starter. (Oh, wait, I forgot. No one is supposed to criticize Tebow. I'm a hater in the media. I take it all back.)
6. A) Champ of the week: Jay Cutler. Many people -- including players -- have killed Cutler for his lackadaisical attitude and blank stares. But he displayed a great deal of fight in the Bears' loss to Detroit on Monday night.
B) Chump of the week: Antonio Cromartie. Wanted Tom Brady to target him. Brady did. Brady beat him. Mess with the Brady, get the horns.
C) Tweet of the week: One of my extremely knowledgeable Twitter followers sent me the picture of the cameraman on the Jets sideline that traversed the Internet at warp nine.
No rules were broken, the Jets say, but my guess is the league office hates this type of chatter. I wouldn't be surprised if later this season or next, the NFL bans all such cameras from the sidelines during games.
7. The Bengals are softening their position on refusing to trade Carson Palmer. Teams that have inquired fairly recently saying they are no longer getting a flat-out no. They're getting: for the moment, we're not trading him.
8. LeBron James tweeted to a reporter his interest in the NFL's deadline for when free agency ends, and I immediately thought it was some Nike PR stunt. It might be. It probably is. But I spoke to one general manager who believes he would be a Pro Bowl tight end within two to three years.
9. If the Chargers fix some of their issues with the offense, the team has a serious chance to win the conference. They're 4-1 (they've beaten mostly lightweights) but still extremely dangerous.
10. Ignore any chatter that says Andy Reid's job is in jeopardy if the Eagles don't make the playoffs this year. No way he's fired.
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