Former Steeler Greg Lloyd Has Strong Feelings About Today's NFL And Players
PITTSBURGH (93-7 The FAN) - Former Steeler Greg Lloyd finds a number of ways to keep himself busy these days from studying Tae Kwon Do in South Korea to playing golf with controversial former Major League Baseball reliever John Rocker, But he took time from all that to talk with Starkey, Miller and Mueller in-studio about his thoughts on the NFL today.
"I still bleed black and gold, but at the end of the day, I had an opportunity to coach a year in Tampa Bay and it's across the league, it's not just in Tampa Bay, but the guys are not truly football players anymore," he said. "Some of it's not their fault, but a lot of it is. Somebody calls up a rule change, and I'm not a [Roger] Goodell fan, so if he wants to fine me, tell him to come down to Atlanta and he can fine me all he wants to. Football is played between the lines, and it's a violent game. It's meant to be violent. It's supposed to be head on collisions."
Lloyd has a very distinct view of how football used to be played and how it's played today. He told us about that and what makes the players different.
"Not so much (how we) trained, but also how we studied," he said. "The guys don't study the game the way we studied it nowadays with NFL picks 2014. We were in before the coaches got in, and we were sometimes the last to leave. Today, it's like, 'I can't wait till this practice is over with so I can go get in my nice car and drive my nice car and let everybody hear how fast it is because their mind is on the wrong thing."
Lloyd also talks about the concussion issue in football today and how their practices used to be so physical that they'd suffer concussions there before even stepping onto the field for a game.
"When we played, we got concussions in practice. In 1987-1988 when Chuck Noll was still head coach there, we had goal line and short yardage and practice on Friday, one versus one, live. Coach Noll would say, 'We're not going in until the offense scores;' and defensively we're saying, 'We're going to be out here all night, cause we're not just going to let them score.' So how many concussions you think went down? Now it's like, you go up there and the word is called 'thud.' A thud is not a tackle."
Things wrapped up with Lloyd discussing the accountability between players during his playing days that is missing from today's game, how he has turned his competitive juices towards golf and what it's like playing with former MLB reliever John Rocker.
