This John Lynch Quote About Jordan Reed Pretty Much Says It All
Yesterday Jordan Reed signed with the 49ers, and I blogged (see above) about how weirdly sad it made me, and wrote a little about how if the league has a moral obligation to not allow someone like him to play. I think it's an interesting debate, and ultimately I do think the league should have a...I don't know...5 concussion policy?? I guess that then would encourage players to hide concussions even more, ultimately putting them in more danger. There's really no winning this game.
So I do that blog about Jordan Reed and his 7 documented concussions and how I just wish he could walk away from the game. And then I see this quote from John Lynch, GM of the 49ers, and he basically sums up why the NFL is so twisted when it comes to this sort of thing. This is the headline:
Full stop, right there. "We feel risk is worth potential reward". FOR WHO????? I find that to be the most asinine quote possible. He's talking about purely from a team aspect…yeah no shit dude, you don't have to deal with ANY of the risk. You are paying him the minimum because if his head literally explodes mid-game, you'll just cart him off the field and never think about him again. Teams carry minimal amounts of risk when it comes to this type of thing at all. This whole thing just grosses me out the way they talk about players like this:
NBC - “There’s some risk-reward,” Lynch said, via 95.7 The Game. “We got to a point where we felt the risk we’re taking on was worth it with the potential reward.”
Head coach Kyle Shanahan said “it’s gonna be a hell of a deal for the Niners” if Reed is able to remain in the lineup, which is both hard to argue with and hard to buy into as the likeliest scenario in Santa Clara.
It's so thinly veiled it drives me nuts. Just come out and say it- "we are paying him the bare minimum and he either stays healthy and we got a steal, or he gets his 8th concussion week 3 and it's no skin off our backs. What a win-win!".
For some reason, I cannot explain it, Jordan Reed gets me so aggravated. I think that's the word I'm looking for here. It's not just sad, it's just aggravation. I feel like we already know how this ends and it fucking upsets me to think about. The entire thing. I know he's a grown man and can do what he wants and the NFL is the NFL and they are going to milk these players' brains until there's no more juice to squeeze, I get it. And it sucks.
Maybe I'll be wrong. That'd be great. Maybe he plays 5 more healthy years, lives to 80 years old, and I overreacted to this entire thing. I just go by science and history and my best judgement and I hope all of that is wrong in this case. I'd love to be wrong. Please prove me wrong. Or you know, just retire now and let's not even have to see. That'd be great.