Thoughts on "the good ol' days". I agree it's gotten to the point of being almost ridiculous. But some QBs are more protected than others, which simply isn't fair. I'm good with refs calling some of the blows to the head, but when a guy gets hammered with an old fashioned shoulder pad to the chest, or just blasted to the ground. and it's called a flag, that I find absurd. Now, when the guy continous on like when
Tony Siragusa put his entire body weight on Rich Gannon in that playoff game years ago (which wasn't called), with the sole intention of taking Gannon out of the game, to me that's BS. No flag was even thrown on the play. Though I agree it does make me wonder why a team doesn't sacrifice a player to do this to Mahomes (or any other top QB) in a meaningful or playoff game. Accept the 15 yard penalty, accept the ejection, eat the $100,000 fine, eat the suspension. But hey, you got rid of Mahomes (Burrow, Lamar, Goff, Hurts, etc.), and your chances of winning the game just went way up. Again, go back to that Raiders-Ravens game. No Gannon = No Raiders = Ravens win.
The half-slides by Flacco, Bridgewater and Trubisky in those highlights to me were also pretty much legit hits (even with being hit in the head). Those guys were trying to eek out every last yard and sliding so late. Plus, this was during a time when other QBs were faking slides, then running farther, and the NFL put a stop to both.
Even if you look at some horrible sacks, like
when Tom Savage was sacked by the 49ers and had a bad concussion that basically ended his career, to me that was pretty much legal. It just sucks for Savage. This is one of the plays that the NFL was looking at when the rules were basically altered to what we have today.