NFL offseason thread

Behind the scenes, the NFL has been polishing its status as the paragon of the hypocritical bad look.

Brooke Vaughn began noticing dramatic behavioral changes in her husband, Clarence, who played in two Super Bowls for the Washington Football Team, about eight years ago. She was startled by them and knew something was dramatically wrong.

Instead of Brooke and her husband getting the needed care for Clarence, and a helping hand from the NFL, they would spend years navigating the thorny maze that is systemic racism. But it's not the systemic racism you may be thinking of.

It was another form, a practice called race-norming.

After the historic concussion settlement in 2013, the NFL started using race-norming to minimize payouts from the agreement, which was initially estimated at $765 million, according to wives and lawyers who have sued the NFL over the practice. Potentially thousands of Black NFL players were discriminated against, lawyers explain, because the NFL used different scoring curves during dementia-related exams, one for Black players and one for white players. The NFL is approximately 70 percent Black.

Race-norming in the concussion case, lawyers say, is essentially assigning a lower score to Black players during dementia-related exams, as opposed to white players, in order to reject the claims from Black players, and either not pay them, or reduce payments, thus potentially saving the NFL hundreds of millions, and possibly billions of dollars, lawyers say.

The NFL denies any claim of discrimination. The league acknowledged in a statement to USA TODAY Sports that race-norming was used but it's "committed to helping find alternative testing techniques that will lead to diagnostic accuracy without employing race-based norms."

The claims of some players are currently going through a dizzying series of court challenges, but wives of the players, the players themselves and lawyers representing them, say the bottom line, to them, is that for years the NFL betrayed Black players.

While players and lawyers are battling on one front, the wives of players are fighting on another. In many cases, their fight is obviously more personal since they often care for ailing husbands.

"What's most despicable about this race-norming is racism stems from ignorance," said Brooke, who is white, to USA TODAY Sports. "They are leveraging intentional racism to keep their pockets full. They are perpetuating racism to make money. That racism trickles down and fuels systemic racism. The NFL is helping to keep racism going."

"I'm going to keep fighting," she said, "because my husband, and these players, are worth fighting for."

The NFL won't say how many players were race-normed so getting the exact number is difficult. However, a lawyer for the players said that potentially several thousand Black players were impacted.​

Football wives say NFL's race-norming 'most despicable,' but their power could change history — USA TODAY

 

I think this is when you can't find any written documents or tapes of someone saying "let's give the blacks lower scores", you look up from the results and you see, that the vast majority (or all) whites get a 90 when the blacks with the same factors get a 70. "Huh??" well that's called de facto discrimination, no direct evidence but sure damn well looks like discrimination. Despicable.

 

My lord the people absolutely losing their shit because players they never met are declining OTAs. Really shows you how much they think they “own” them.

 

Remember when OTAs were supposed to be optional?

 

Pretty much sums it up. Really good player ... the sort where Patriots fans might want to hang on to the jersey and fully deserves to be held in high regard. But any Hall of Fame discussion is lunacy.

 

These guys aren't rocket scientists, but JFC, this is seven layers of stupidity:

 

Is there a sentence somewhere in there?

 

Have we reached the "every player is awesome/every player sucks" part of the NFL Draft buildup?

 

Do the Bills have a vaccine for choking?

 

Aw come on, you've got a stud at QB. I was one of the skeptics but damn if he's not impressive. I think he's maybe the 2nd or 3rd best QB right now (besides Mahomes).

 

What say you?