OR we can have rules and expect massively paid and highly skilled/intelligent players to follow them. Do you honestly not believe that defenders try to hit QBs harder than anyone else? Forget how hard they train, it’s the single most important opposing player by a wide margin and they’re going to tee off on them if they can.
There have been rules about hitting QBs for decades now - starting in 1940 (!). And it isn’t just QBs - there are other rules about illegal hits on other players. Chop blocks were eliminated in 1981. In 1996 they outlawed hits “away from the flow of the play”. And handfuls of other rules since then to cut down on the violence in what is indeed a violent game. These people have families.
Clearly Al-Shaair had opportunity to avoid or lessen this contact - we don’t have to excuse it. This kind of play happens in every game at some point and the vast, vast majority of players manage to get through it without breaking the rule and causing the Quarterback’s brain to cease communicating with his body.
I don’t understand this compulsion to take what is clearly contact that is outside of the bell curve for what typically happens and use it to condemn the whole rule. The players know it was a bad hit, that’s why they immediately responded. We aren’t going to hear from the PA about this because it isn’t about the rule - it’s about Al-Shaair making an unnecessarily violent illegal hit.
That’s what this is - and we don’t have to tear down the whole system because a particularly violent player can’t control himself.