2012 NFL Free Agency, Draft, and Offseason

[Type Ryan]

Are Rugby players really that much smaller? I've seen some monstrous dudes play rugby, at least at the professional level anyway.

[Advocate]

Your logic here is like saying that everyone should fill up every room in every building with cigarette smoke because we did it in the 1950's and everyone loves it in Mad Men. It's just not the way things work.

No. My logic was the NFL celebrating those things, while on the other side of the mouth they are saying "STOP!!!"

[Diff-chan]

Correction: They were celebrating those things, and they stopped when it made them look like a bunch of hypocritical assholes.

People often celebrate stuff and then realize it was maybe not so good an idea. Remember WWE's Chris Benoit tribute?

[Joust Williams]

Rugby isn't close to American football. Aussie rules, though...that's messed up. Fun to watch sometimes, though

[The_Meach]

Watching rugby, those guys look like NFL fullbacks minus pads. Or maybe smaller LBs.

Would love to know what the data tells us about long term effects of rugby. Part of the NFLs problem IS the helmets/pads imo. More mass, false sense of security, human missiles, essentially.

[Yoshi]

Correction: They were celebrating those things, and they stopped when they became targets for lawsuits and were worried about the gravy train.

Fixed

[Diff-chan]

They should be worried about the gravy train.

Unfortunately there is about 20 years of them using tobacco industry tactics. A few months of fines and cancelling some SportsCenter clips won't change that.

[Type Ryan]

Rugby isn't close to American football. Aussie rules, though...that's messed up. Fun to watch sometimes, though

They're not identical, obviously, but there are similarities. The games are played with the same intensity. The scrum line is very similar to the line of scrimmage, they have extra points after scoring, they punt, while they lateral the ball for movement, American football was primarily a running game just like rugby until my man Sammy Baugh pretty much introduced the forward pass to the NFL. The rest is history.

[jyoung]

The Rugby video game that came out recently is actually really good. It's a better representation of its sports than Madden is of football.

[Yoshi]

And the other shoe has dropped from the uncapped year bullshit. The best part is the Redskins and Cowboys didn't even have to be the plaintiffs. Here's hoping the league loses, and EA's Madden deal and DirecTV's season package are collateral damage.