Jim Souhan See more than of the story

Harrison Smith was a skull-seeking rookie when I asked him whether he worried about damaging himself or opponents. "No," was his answer, a shrug his punctuation.

Now entering his 7th season, Smith has established himself as 1 of the best players in the NFL, and ane of the more adaptable. He told Ben Goessling of the Star Tribune that he wants to "evolve with the game" equally the league tries to protect players from themselves and their union brothers.

Smith wants to evolve. The guy next to him wants to regress.

Safeties are often the brains of an NFL defense. Smith wants to use his to read offenses; Andrew Sendejo wants to use his to prop upward one of the dumbest hats ever fabricated that doesn't feature a beer container and a straw.

"Make Football game Fierce Again," Sendejo's hat reads, although its target audition probably doesn't.

Divining how the NFL is going to make players safer is difficult. The new rules designed to prevent head-to-head contact are well-intentioned and incommunicable to intelligently enforce, especially when office-fourth dimension officials who were selling term life insurance on Friday are asked on Sun to discern the difference between intentional spearing and adventitious helmet contact.

It'due south non difficult to sympathise Sendejo's position on violence. Undrafted out of higher, he began his career with the Sacramento Mountain Lions (really) and has built a quality NFL career by hitting hard and asking questions later on.

Sendejo is exactly the kind of player the NFL needs to discipline, or weed out. His fell hitting to Mike Wallace'southward head last year could have maimed Wallace. Sendejo led with his head and hit Wallace's caput, creating one of those NFL moments in which you wonder if you may see a actor die on the field.

Consistent with the NFL'southward idiotically uneven disciplinary system, Sendejo received a ane-game suspension.

Now Sendejo is taunting the NFL, begging for a more than serious suspension the next time he hits an opponent with his head, intentionally or incidentally. He's risking his career. He also seems willing to damage his team. Losing a starter to a interruption is exactly the kind of evolution that could cost the Vikings a playoff berth, or a high seeding, or a habitation playoff game.

The NFL, like Smith, must evolve. The league has a brutal history of ignoring or hiding the effects of its violence on current and former players. What'due south remarkable virtually the modern NFL is that the players now fully understand what happens to players who suffer encephalon injuries, or other damaged body parts, and even so those similar Sendejo feel entitled to inflict that kind of damage.

This mind-set is wrong, and information technology'south bad for the league.

Players are correct to be confused by the arbitrament of the new rules, and right to be offended when a form tackle creates incidental helmet contact that draws a flag.

But what's the alternative? Assuasive players to continue leading with the crown of the helmet and knocking out opponents?

Hockey and lacrosse provide the model for the correct level of NFL violence. Hockey players and lacrosse players lead with the shoulder, and hit to the shoulder or sternum. You can knock the wind out of someone, perhaps even crack a rib, with this kind of hit. You tin can knock someone flat. But you lot won't do lifelong harm to the encephalon.

Football doesn't need to be more violent. The game is at its best when its best players are healthy.

And if this doesn't make sense to you Vikings fans, ask yourself this: Wouldn't you have liked to see Brett Favre protected in the NFC Championship Game in New Orleans?

If officials hadn't allowed so many inexpensive hits on Favre, he would have run for that concluding first down, and Ryan Longwell probable would have fabricated that field goal, and the Vikings probable would accept beaten the Colts in the Super Bowl.

His hat reads: "Make Football Violent Again."

If Sendejo had played for Gregg Williams, Vikings fans would hate him.

Jim Souhan's podcast tin can be heard at MNSPN.com. On Twitter: @SouhanStrib. • jsouhan@startribune.com