Aikman: Nothing Illegal About Hit On Cutler
(WSCR) With time winding down in the second quarter, Bears quarterback Jay Cutler was drilled by Texans linebacker Tim Dobbins, ultimately leading to Cutler's exit from the game.
Referees flagged Dobbins for an illegal hit on the quarterback, and Cutler stayed down for a few moments before getting up and remaining in the game for the final 2:56 of the first half. During halftime, the Bears announced Cutler had sustained a concussion and would not return to the game.
One Hall of Fame quarterback said he didn't see anything wrong with Dobbins' hit.
"I've got a question for you on that," Troy Aikman told The Mully and Hanley Show. "(Cutler) was beyond the line of scrimmage on that, right? So, at that point, isn't he a runner? There's no quarterback protection. I was a little surprised by the penalty. I thought they'd pick (the flag) up once they realized he was across the line."
LISTEN: Troy Aikman on The Mully and Hanley Show
Podcast
For the rest of this interview and other 670 The Score interviews click here.
Aikman went on to explain that though the league is making efforts to reduce concussions, not much is actually changing.
"I thought now with the helmet continuing to improve and now the rules being in affect that don't allow you to have the helmet-to-helmet hits and the protection of defenseless receivers and quarterbacks in the pocket and things like that, I really thought that we would then begin to see concussions trend downward," Aikman said. "It would be hard to watch the games yesterday and see all the quarterbacks that went down and think that anything is trending downward."
Aikman even said that now some teams are hesitant to admit when a player has a concussion out of fear of being scrutinized.
"It's hard when you're talking about a head injury to categorize anything as being mild," Aikman said. "When someone's on the sidelines and they have any type of head injury, for them to go back - that's always been the concern. Once they started having the legislation as far as how they're going to handle (head injuries) and the procedures they're going to have to handle concussions, does that mean that organizations are going to be less inclined to say he had a concussion? They're reluctant to do that because they know they're so heavily scrutinized. It's a really tough deal."
