The NFL's new normal

It isn't terribly unusual for members of a championship team, particularly those who have been at it for a while, to retire. It's almost expected.

Such is the case with Dan Connolly, an offensive lineman and one of the captains for last year's Super Bowl champions, the New England Patriots. In an interview with ESPN.com, Connolly announced his decision to retire rather than pursue a free-agent deal with another team. As is often the case, Connolly noted several different factors that contributed to his decision. He mentioned not wanting to uproot his family or be away from them for the duration of an NFL season. Having that Super Bowl ring certainly played a part as well, he acknowledged, making it easer to step away with fewer regrets.

And, in what is now the norm for such interviews, Connolly acknowledged that health was the "biggest factor" in his decision, acknowledging the four diagnosed concussions during his NFL career as well as one back in high school in Missouri:

"It's important to me to leave the game healthy," Connolly said. "I'm able to be here for my kids and walk away on my own terms. I feel like I got everything I could out of football in playing 10 years, winning a Super Bowl, and playing alongside some truly great players."

Connolly was 32, not exceedingly young by NFL retirement standards (and certainly not comparable to Chris Borland), but also not as old as many players who squeeze every last year out of the NFL.

Had Connolly not been a member of last year's Patriots (no suggestion that he was involved in "Deflategate" at least), it's quite likely his retirement announcement would have received a lot less attention and probably wouldn't have elicited an interview on ESPN.com. But it did, and even the coverage of this story shows a few things are still askew in media coverage of the story.

For one thing, it's all about the concussions. They're bad enough. They're frankly horrifying when you're in the middle of a bad one. But it isn't just the concussions. More and more studies are pointing the finger at sub-concussive hits as major factors in the long-term brain trauma experienced by football players as well as other athletes from sports such as boxing, hockey, and maybe even soccer. These hits don't cause the same level of disorientation and immediate debilitation as concussive hits. They may not even hurt. But the accumulation of such hits over time increasingly tracks with long-term damage.

Again, focusing on concussions misses potentially the greater problem. The "dings" are doing their damage even if they go unchecked or unremarked until well after the fact.

It is also rather (and I'm being quite restrained here) interesting that retiring after five concussions overall is being portrayed as prudent. It's not bad enough to ignore the ticking time bomb of the sub-concussive hits piling up season after season, but we've decided how many concussions are not too many?

In short, as long as players continue to run into each other at high speeds (and let's face it, NFL players are insanely fast) or throw their 300-lb. bodies at each other repeatedly, we're not going to get any closer to cutting down on these traumatic levels of damage. But increasingly it looks like we're just accepting this as normal. It's troubling that this isn't more troubling.

To close, an exercise for you; go through and read some of those articles linked above, or Google "sub-concussive hits football" or some similar combination. Some of them are heavy on the medical jargon, but push on through.

Then, with those studies fresh on your mind, spend some time meditating on Genesis 1:27.

Is it even truly possible to be "ready for impact"?