(Football Hardest Hits/X).
Read about six hard-hitting, CTE-inducing plays that were bad enough to get them banned from the NFL. It was a wild, wild west on the gridiron in the past decades.
1. The “Forearm Shiver” Plays
The forearm shiver can be defined as one person hitting another with their forearm. That description really doesn’t do this play justice.
To best illustrate the forearm shiver, we will have the expert, the late Hall of Famer John Henry Johnson, show us.
Why is John Henry Johnson the expert? He was believed to have broken two men’s jaws while playing 13 seasons in the NFL from 1954 to 1966 as a halfback and fullback, and broke one man’s jaw in his one season in the CFL in 1953.
Most notably, Johnson fractured fellow HOF’er Charley Trippi’s skull in 1955. As a result of the hit, Trippi’s nose was broken, he had a concussion, and he had a protruding bone behind his eye that gave him double vision.
Johnson himself mentioned the importance of the elbow in the forearm shiver. Other hypotheses were about how he moved his hand while delivering his forearm. Either way, his forearm shiver was something to behold.
Forearm Shiver Ban
Players can still use their forearms in the NFL. Particularly, an offensive player with the ball can use their forearm to ward off defense. This move is more often called a stiff arm.
However, that is a far cry from the move that defensemen were using primarily in the 1970s. Defense can’t use their forearm at all, and on either side of the ball, a forearm to the jaw would be unnecessary roughness.
It’s not clear exactly when the forearm shiver was “banned.” Stan Blinka was suspended for one game after landing a forearm on his opponent’s jaw in 1982. Blinka was the second player ever to be suspended for unnecessary roughness. It was a different league back then.
Trippi passed away due to dementia, but at his advanced age, that couldn’t be 100% attributed to his football history.
Obviously, John Henry Johnson didn’t suffer the impacts of his own forearm shiver. He did still develop Alzheimer’s at 59 years old, didn’t remember a thing about his career by the 1990s, and was wheelchair-bound and couldn’t swallow the final year of his life. The danger of the game didn’t escape him.
2. Head Slapping
The head slap is synonymous with Hall of Famer David “Deacon” Jones. Deacon wasn’t the only man to implement the head slap, but he certainly was the best. The move is exactly what the name implies; no guesses on this one.
Deacon Jones loved the move because it worked. Easy as that. No shame in that; it was legal when he used it. That goes for all these plays and the people who used them.
Head-slapping was banned from the NFL in 1977. This was much to the chagrine of many players and fans who felt that football is a physical sport, and the move was critical for defensemen trying to rush the quarterback.
Head Slap Recipients
Joe DeLamielleure
Hall of Famer Joe DeLamielleure would likely disagree with those fans and players. He lost the majority of his hearing in his left ear from a particularly vicious head slap. Joe sustained 100 of the slaps, which is believed to directly correlate with his current dementia symptoms.
Although it’s impossible to diagnose CTE while a player is alive, cutting-edge technology at UCLA has tentatively diagnosed him with the condition, which will be confirmed by an autopsy once he dies.
An avid reader in the past, DeLamielleure cannot read more than a few pages of a book at once. He also has memory loss, loses his wallet 3–4 times a day, is newly developing mood swings, and has struggled with suicidal ideations he didn’t have before. And that was 11 years ago. He is still alive, but we haven’t heard from him since 2014.
Gene Hickerson
Gene Hickerson couldn’t recognize his teammates and likely didn’t know what was happening when he was wheelchaired onto the stage in his HOF induction in 2007. He forgot his last name when signing autographs in 2004. Hickerson probably didn’t remember the hundreds of head slaps he got. His doctor suspected that his cognitive decline was related to his football career. RIP, Gene Hickerson.
Rayfield Wright
Another guy who would likely agree with this would be the late Hall of Famer, Rayfield Wright. He directly correlated the head slaps he received in his 14-year career in the NFL with his dementia.
Wright struggled with headaches, dizziness, and mood swings while he was still a player. They only got worse with time. In 2014, he cried many tears out of fear for what he knew was happening to him mentally. The seizures that destroyed his body and that he only developed post-NFL career are what eventually took his life in 2022. RIP, Rayfield Wright.
What were those fans and players saying about head slaps needing to be apart of the game again?
3. Helmet-To-Helmet Hits
Helmet-to-helmet hits were banned in the NFL in 1996. Obviously, they still occur. The play is a foul only if the defenseman leads with his helmet or targets the head of an offensive player.
It would be impossible to count the billions of helmet-to-helmet hits and their negative effects on football players, but we can pinpoint one event.
In what was considered a clean play at the time, Jack Tatum led with his head when defending wide receiver Darryl Stingley. The hit was so hard that it sent Stingley’s helmet flying.
Stingley didn’t know that that play was his final time walking ever again. Darryl passed away at just 55 due to complications related to quadriplegia.
4. Spearing Plays
A sub-play of the “helmet-to-helmet hit” is spearing. This is when a player on either side of the ball leads with the crown of their helmet, assuming the shape of a spear with their head out and their arms to their sides.
Spearing was banned in 1976.
According to the Textbook of Family Medicine, the incidence of quadriplegia decreased from 2.24 and 10.66 per 100,000 participants in high school and college football in 1976 to 1.30 and 2.66 per 100,000 participants in 1977. That’s what we call a win around here.
5. Chop-block Plays
As described by the NFL, the chop block is when an offensive player blocks a defensive player below the waist while the defenseman is being blocked by another offender waist up.
This is a new rule as of 2022. Prior to 2022, the offensive player had to block the defensive player below the knee while another offender was blocking them from the waist up. It has been illegal since 2016.
The chop-block is the one unique play on this list that has been banned to prevent lower body injuries. The rest are more geared to protect a player from neurocognitive decline. Full-body health matters! But would you rather be unable to swallow or have a bum knee? That’s why we put the focus where we did.
6. The “Clothesline Tackle”
Dick “Night Train” Lane, one of the greatest players of all time, had the clothesline tackle named after him. It was known in the league as the “Night Train Necktie.” Dick Lane was sensitive (for good reason) regarding his nickname, so we won’t continue to use it in this article (read all about the HOFer here).
The concept behind the clothesline is that the defender sticks their arm out and catches the other player by surprise. The offensive player typically runs neck-first into the outstretched arm, usually falling afterwards.
In these videos (here and here), you can see the cornerback showing a few plays: the clothesline, the forearm shiver, and a horse-collar tackle.
There is no specific “ban” on the clothesline. It’s understood in modern football that this type of play would not be allowed and is under the umbrella of unnecessary roughness.
Dick Lane gave as good as he got on the field, but the danger of the game got to him anyway. Lane had surgery in the last few years of his life to reduce fluid in his brain. His family assumed he had CTE, and he struggled with memory loss and wandered dangerously. At the tail end of his life, he couldn’t dress or bathe himself. RIP, Dick Lane.
Want to catch some less violent plays in the NFL? Check out my other football content here!
