Fear of the Fine Results in Lost Season for Dolphins Tight End Dustin Keller

The Miami Dolphins lost an important piece to their championship puzzle Saturday night when tight end Dustin Keller went down with a season ending knee injury. He was hit low on the play in question by rookie D.J. Swearinger, but if there is anyone Keller and Dolphins fans should be mad it Swearinger isn't it.

They need to be mad at Roger Goodell and the league for creating the Fear of the Fine.

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Keller's knee got as blow out as a knee could possibly get during the above play; his ACL, MCL, and PCL along with a dislocated knee. That is a lot of damage so hopefully he can recover and eventually come back.

Personally, I put some of the blame on the lack of actual tacking in the NFL these days. Swearinger never tried to wrap Keller up, but instead did what many defensive backs now do and just tried to take his legs out.

As a safety, he is a lot smaller than Keller so he should go low to make the play, but if he was trying to wrap him up rather than knock him down the brunt of the contact would not have gone on the knee like it did. It is not his fault though. That's what everyone does now.

The rest of the blame deserves to go where Swearinger put it, on the current system of fining players in the NFL. The Palm Beach Post quoted him as saying:

“I was making a hit playing football. In this league you’ve got to go low. If you go high you’re going to get a fine."

He went on to say:

“The rules say you can’t hit high so I went low and I’m sorry that happened. I would think you’d rather have more concussions than leg injuries. Leg injury, you can’t come back from that. A concussion, you be back in a couple of weeks.”

The NFL is fining guys in order to try and appear proactive when it comes to concussions. However, what the league is actually accomplishing is a degradation of the game.

Guys like Swearinger make it to the NFL because their instincts are so fine tuned that they are able to act and react on the field better and faster than anyone else. When they have to start thinking about what they are doing--like where they hit someone in order to make a tackle--the game suffers.

More importantly the players are going to suffer because they will get hurt since their reactions are going to be slower as they make sure they don't hit someone in the wrong place and get fined.

Swearinger can't be the first player to think this; he is just the first to admit it. Hopefully others will speak up and the league will reconsider this ridiculous policy.