Football has been called a game of inches for a hundred years, and now people are talking about how defenders need to ease up when a QB is running towards them because they should assume that QB is going to slide. I'm sure back in the old days, QB didn't slide. Then in the 70's, 80's and 90's they started sliding (and I don't remember this being an issue back then... nor do I remember it being an issue with Brees when he slid). But now we're in an era where a lot of big, mobile QB don't slide. Trevor Lawrence would fall into that category. In 3 and half years in the NFL he has ran for over 1,000 yards and 14 TD. I don't think he did it by sliding every time he took off with the football.
These defensive players are taught to fight for every inch they give up. It is engrained into their mentality. And now, somehow football has a (litigious) philosophical change to where the defensive player... who's job it is to stop the offensive player with the ball through the use of shear brute force... is now also responsible for the safety of the guy he's using every bit of his strength, speed, power and determination to stop. Its backwards.