Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk put up this piece today claiming that Eagles DB Ellis Hobbs essentially said that current Panthers' defensive coordinator Sean McDermott told players to "ignore" the safety video the league distributed to players during the 2010 season to minimize on concussions. This was said in a film made by former player Dorsey Levens called "Bell Rung" detailing the lives of concussed players.

As you probably know, we here at CSR are hardly going to start a Mike Florio fan club. We take exception to the fact he has an innate ability to make mountains of molehills, and his extrapolations for the sake of sensationalism leave a lot to be desired. This is another of these occasions. We'll look more at his report...

After the jump

The main issue I take with the article is a huge jump Florio takes from McDermott talking about his player's attitude and turning it into a situation of McDermott telling his players to ignore the league's video. From the article Hobbs said: 

"Not 10 minutes after that film, we went into the defensive meeting and the D coordinator [Sean McDermott] got up and said, ‘Nothing changes about us. Nothing changes in your guys' mentality. I mean, we all knew that anyway because we want jobs. I don't really see anybody with a job who can't tackle."

McDermott tells players not to let his video get in their heads, or change their mentality which Florio turns into: 

Still, the fact that Hobbs would so candidly admit that the man in charge of the team's defense would essentially say "ignore what you just saw" is surprising.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't see these two as being congruous. McDermott is telling his players that he doesn't want them to be too concerned with how they hit that they change their games. I agree with this mentality 100%, when you stop playing the game the way you know so you can avoid a fine, then you are playing scared which will ultimately lead not only to more losses, but more injuries. I definitely don't see this is the former Eagles DC saying "keep hitting them in the head!" the way Mike Florio will have you believe.

Ultimately, I feel good about McDermott as a defensive coordinator, and like that he has a fiery 'never stop' attitude towards the game. What do you think?