Filed under: Raiders, Steelers

At this rate, your average NFL player will have to pull a skirt over his shoulder pads by the end of the decade.

You can’t breathe on quarterbacks anymore. You also have league and union officials huddling about limiting the amount of contact in practices during training camp and the regular season.

Yes, there is an epidemic of concussions in the league, and, yes, action was needed on the matter long ago. It’s just that you wonder if football warriors such as Jack Tatum could have functioned inside this rapidly growing namby-pamby environment of the NFL.

I say no.

“Yes, he could have,” said Art Shell, the Hall of Fame offensive lineman, referring to Tatum, who, contrary to popular belief, was a notoriously jarring but mostly clean free safety.

Tatum died on Tuesday at 61 of a massive heart attack, but it also could have been from a broken heart. He is in the College Football Hall of Fame after his greatness at Ohio State. Still, he lacks a bust in Canton for this eternal reason: despite prospering decades ago with Shell on those explosive Oakland Raiders teams, Tatum has a slew of folks holding that Darryl Stingley tragedy against him.

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