At the owners meeting, the NFL has adopted a bunch of rules changes designed to reduce the risk of injury. Rules to prevent guys from hitting receivers with their shoulders or forearms, rules to create a quarterback "strike zone", rules that even limit the wedge to a maximum of two players, effectively banning the long kick return. Don't be surprised if any day now they announce they'll require D-linemen to count "3 Mississippi" before they pass rush and they've outlawed the tackle. Well Rodney Harrison for one will have none of it. From SI.com (click here for the audio link) :

NFL safety Rodney Harrison is not happy with the NFL's new rules. Here are some of his comments: It's crazy. You've been taught since you were six and seven years old to finish the play... Football is supposed to be a man's sport... The game is going to slow down and it's going to get softer... It's like patty-cake right now. ..Harrison doesn't think that Tom Brady thought Bernard Pollard put a dirty hit on him. I feel like Tom is a second-effort guy, Harrison said. He's a guy who doesn't give up on plays... Harrison said he couldn't change the way he played. Harrison said he had been taught that way and doing it forever.

Rodney Harrison might very well be the most misunderstood athlete of our times. To the 30 NFL cities where he hasn't played, he's a cheap-shotting head hunter with $400,000 in fines over his career. But if you've had him on your team, you know him as a thoughtful, articulate, Jack Bauer-tough, throwback player. One of the few guys around who could've played with Otto Graham or Chuck Bednarik or Jack Lambert or today. Notice there's not one word in those quotes about "How are we supposed to play defense?" No bitching. No whining. Just an old school purist who likes football not as a contact sport, but as a collision sport saying he hates to see his sport heading toward the day when they hand out little belts with flags velcroed to them. In "Patton" there's a scene where a German officer assigned to study Patton calls him "the perfect anachronism." That's Rodney Harrison. A leather helmet guy stuck who's not happy to find himself in the National Touch Football League.