Monitor Lizard

Steelers coach Mike Tomlin seems to be on a personal mission to depress the fantasy football value of his running back, Rashard Mendenhall. First he declared that unheralded back-up Isaac Redman would be in line for goal line carries. Next was that the team was going to be "monitoring his carries," which is counting them, I guess.

Tomlin missed out on a chance to become my favorite NFL coach here. All he had to do was say, "No, actually, we don't even know who is carrying the ball from down to down. It's not as if the playes were jerseys with numbers on them. We're just lucky the linemen don't take the ball once in a while, for fun." If there is a running back in football right now with unmonitored carries, raise your hand. Assuming that's still something you can do. Maybe you could just stamp your foot or moan.

Part of the fun of living in an age of diminished expectations is that we're supposed to just feel smarter than those people who came before us. They burned up running backs (and, of course, pitchers in baseball) like a chain smoker with a late girlfriend, depriving us all of the joys of wasted careers and blasted lives, and it's all we can do to keep from chuckling like Dr. Hibbert at how tremendously idiotic they all were. And never you mind that, assuming there is still a league to enjoy a few decades from now, that the people who watch it will be similarly convinced of our dopiness.

Limiting carries isn't the issue. Preventing damage is. And how that's done is the billion dollar question, isn't it? The Boston Red Sox have managed to keep their pitchers healthier than most in the past few years by establishing baselines at the start of the year, then allowing further work only when things looked clear. That seems a little smarter than counting pitches, doesn't it?

If I were running a team, I'd have an assistant chart and count hits on my fragile players, alternate them when possible, schedule decoy plays where they weren't necessarily putting a shoulder into anyone, and make sure that they didn't always get the ball between the tackles or in space, so that my team would be harder to scheme against. I'd also pull my offensive players aggressively in blowouts, only use my best players at the goal line in clutch situations, and bring in the back up QB fairly often. In other words, I would redefine fantasy nightmare.

But going back to the damage issue... what really needs to happen is either a dramatic increase in helmet technology (unlikely), or an equally dramatic change in the way that the game is officiated, so that head to head contact is limited. The current situation is an untenable middle, where the players get just enough protection to get seriously hurt. Or an MRI machine on the sideline, so that each player can be checked when they are out of the game. Maybe we can have it sponsored by a health insurance company. I suspect they've got the scratch. Or, at least, the monitors.