A popular topic in the NFL in recent years has been player safety, especially when it comes to hits on quarterbacks.
On Sunday, there were a number of questionable penalties called on defenders for hitting quarterbacks, including in the Patriots-Texans game involving Mac Jones on the final drive of the game.
Appearing on The Greg Hill Show Monday morning, Bill Belichick seemed to be in favor of the rule changes in recent years focusing on player safety.
“I think the rules all reflect that," he said. "The league has taken player safety to a much different level than it was at other points in the NFL’s history. And rules that cover defenseless receivers, contacting the quarterback and so forth are definitely part of the game that wasn’t there when I came into the league. But, that’s been an evolution to the game that I think has been good.
“They changed the cut-blocking rule this year, so they’ve done little things every year to look at player safety and nothing more important than the health of the players. Nobody wants to see anybody get hurt. But unfortunately that’s one of the realities of this sport. But to minimize that is a good thing.”
The Patriots coach did seem to agree with defensive players that sometimes it's frustrating, but also said to help with that the NFL and college should be playing by the same rules.
“I understand the frustration of players at times feeling they can’t play as physically as they want to, especially when you’ve been brought up playing it one way and then it goes a different way," Belichick said. "I hope at some point the NFL and college football could have the same rules on things like targeting and those personal foul penalties and everything so that as players learn the techniques and get instructed in college on what is and what isn’t legal contact and so forth that those rules would eventually be the same in the National Football League -- whatever they end up being. Whatever the right thing to do is, but I think it’s hard to re-teach some of that.
"Like I said, it would be nice if it was all the same.”
