Inside the Trenches: The Life of a Lineman

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In my 8 or so years of playing football I’ve often heard coaches liken the job of the linemen to that of a soldier fighting in a trench, pushing, attacking, and struggling for every inch of the battlefield that is the line of scrimmage. Of course, the job of a lineman is far less dramatic and glorious than that description makes it out to be, most of our job is just keeping the defense at bay so the quarterback and the rest of the backfield has time to get a play off. Unfortunately for us offensive linemen, the defense has a much larger bag of tricks when it comes to the actual clash, they can grab, pull, or simply spin by while the O-line is relegated mostly to pushing with shoulder and hand. This can make things difficult if, for instance …show more content…

All of their arguments made sense, after all we were playing Football, a sport that relies heavily upon hitting the other guy as best as one can, so it makes sense to use any legal (or sometimes illegal) maneuver at your disposal. But, being the stubborn guy that I am, I ignored my teammates and continued on with my self-important crusade against cut blocking, even after being told I would be replaced on the starting team. My rationale was twofold: 1) I didn’t want to seriously injure an opponent (they were just other high school football players after all) and I didn’t want to get myself injured, seeing as throwing yourself on the ground in front of a 200-300 pound lineman is a very good way of getting kicked in the stomach or having your hands stomped on. Of course, to truly examine this moral dilemma we have to strip away all this extra stuff and get down to the true center of this issue, is it ok to perform an action on an opposing player that has the potential to cause significant injury to both parties, even if it ultimately benefits one’s own

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