Necessary roughness

Full disclosure: I’m defending Detroit Lions safety Brian Branch.

In the 1990s, quarterbacks didn’t taunt, as Patrick Mahomes did while scoring a rushing touchdown in front of Branch, who pulled up because he would have been penalized for laying the proverbial glove on the NFL’s marketing darling. Mahomes then pointed and flexed in his direction, which is something you’d never see Troy Aikman or Jim Kelly or Phil Simms or any other ’90s quarterback do, because if they did it they would have gotten their jaw broken (or worse) in the following series, by the likes of Charles Haley or Lawrence Taylor. The NFL of the ’90s was a violent but self-regulating ecosystem where trash talk existed but was heavily regulated by retribution.

Fast forward to the end of Sunday night’s football game. Branch, no doubt still flushed with adrenaline, chose not to shake the hand of the quarterback who taunted him. That’s fine. I have chosen not to shake a lot of hands in my career. If a guy is classy and cool, he gets a handshake and a hug. If he isn’t, he doesn’t. That’s fine. This isn’t pee-wee league with its legislated handshake line. Chiefs wide receiver Juju Smith-Schuster took umbrage to Branch’s lack of a handshake and began jawing at him—probably using words not fit for print in WORLD Opinions. Branch then punched him in his helmeted jaw.

This, in the world of football, is the very definition of not a big deal. Nobody got hurt, and everybody was fine.

But NFL talking heads (including some former players) spoke of it as though Branch broke into Smith-Schuster’s home and shot his dog and lit his sofa on fire. Words like “outrage” and “unacceptable” were used because the NFL is trying to convince fans (important) and gamblers (more important) that the product they’re selling is sanitized and clean and kept in check by the now-steroidal weirdos who wear zebra stripes and occasionally make the right calls unless the Chiefs are playing. But football is a violent game played by violent men who know exactly what they’re signing up for when they sign up to play it. The rewards are significant but so are the risks.

To wit: The NFL circa 2025 is supposedly cracking down on “taunting,” which is why your favorite wide receiver will sometimes get a penalty called against him if he signals for a first down in the face of a defender, but if your favorite wide receiver is (for some reason) Juju Smith-Schuster who steps over Branch’s prone body after clipping him on a 4th-quarter run play (a non-call), there will be no penalty (for the clip or the taunt). Point being, it’s hard to define taunting in an ecosystem driven by violence and adrenaline.

Today’s NFL games are characterized by arguments over what constitutes a late hit, what constitutes helmet-to-helmet contact, and what constitutes which “roughness” is necessary and which is “unnecessary.” Travis Kelce whines for a penalty on every pass play in which he doesn’t get a catch. To be clear, you never saw this from Mark Bavaro—who is everything you want your son to be if your son plays tight end because we know deep down that there’s a right and a wrong way of doing things, and we’re drawn to guys who do things right. Despite our inherited and total depravity, we’re also created in God’s image and like it when guys do things right on the field. Part of transmitting the culture, then, is teaching these things to our sons.

We’ve lost stoicism. We’ve lost class. We’ve lost what you admired about Troy Aikman, which is something along the lines of “man that guy is taking a beating and never complaining about it.” This is admirable and cool in a man, because life gives you plenty of opportunities to take beatings, and plenty of choices either to give up or keep going. We admire the guys who keep going and want our sons to do the same.

When football is working correctly, like hockey, it regulates itself. If you cheap-shot my quarterback, for example, you had better keep your head on a swivel for the rest of the game because I’m coming for you. Everybody used to understand that, because football provided one last, sweet segment of society where men could solve problems on their own without focus groups and committees and consultants.

But now we have referees on Anadrol-50 cycles, trying to legislate it for us, and usually failing. The game is gradations less fun, as a result.

Rest well, Brian Branch. I’ve done worse.