Ron Rivera has identified something he’d like the NFL to address originally appeared on NBC Sports Washington
Ron Rivera has seen a similar-looking situation unfold a couple of times now in Washington’s past few games, and because of the consequences of those situations, the coach is ready for the league to step in.
The two incidents that caught Rivera’s attention happened in Weeks 13 and 15; the former involved Logan Thomas and the latter featured Daniel Wise.
And while the roles on the two snaps were reversed, the outcome of them turned out to be the same: Rivera had to watch as his guy laid on the ground, injured.
For Thomas, he got hurt in Las Vegas. On a fourth-quarter run, the tight end worked across the formation to try and seal off Raiders defensive end Yannick Ngakoue in order to prevent Ngakoue from chasing down Antonio Gibson.
Ngakoue, however, responded by going low on Thomas — even though Thomas was more so just trying to get in his way as opposed to deliver a heavy block on him — and ended up hitting No. 82 in the knee.
Thomas tore his ACL in the collision.
For Wise, his exchange occurred Tuesday in Philadelphia on a play that was akin to Thomas’, except that he was the defender and Eagles tight end Dallas Goedert was attempting to execute what Thomas was hoping to do in Vegas.
The difference was that Goedert chopped Wise down instead of, like Thomas, simply aiming to impede his opponent’s progress.
Wise was forced to depart the contest early with a knee issue and was seen pounding the grass in frustration over Goedert’s move.
After calling the events featuring Thomas “avoidable,” Rivera used the same word on Thursday to describe the circumstances surrounding Wise’s injury.
“Again, what you’re really doing on the backside is you’re just trying to slow that man down as much as you’re trying to block him because you just don’t want him to catch [the run] from behind,” Rivera told reporters. “You can avoid those things.”
Rivera, who’s a part of the NFL’s competition committee, is interested in solutions that could eliminate such hits from hurting additional pros in the future.
“I think it’s something that maybe the league, we need to look at,” he said. “It happens a lot and it’s unfortunate. You’d like to do things to prevent those types of injuries.”
As a former player himself, Rivera definitely understands that these things unfold at such a fast pace. And to be fair to Goedert, for instance, he didn’t know that Wise was a ways away from the Philly ball carrier and wasn’t that much of a factor as a potential tackler; he was merely executing his assignment.
Overall, yes, Rivera gets that there’s too much of an effort to legislate things on the field at times. Not everything has to be governed.
Even so, he views this matter as one that should be addressed.
“I think that player safety is a must,” Rivera said.
“It’s funny, because sometimes I think we go to the extreme when we don’t need to, and in other cases, I don’t think we do enough,” he continued. “It’s really about being able to truly say, ‘Hey, this is really for the betterment of the game and for the protection of the players.’ To me, that’s an important statement.”
In what’s a brutal coincidence, Rivera’s witnessed two pieces of his roster get the worst of these one-on-ones across Washington’s last three outings.
Therefore, ensuring that he and other coaches don’t have to encounter another injury like the ones that affected Thomas and Wise beginning in 2022 sounds like an objective he’s about to prioritize.