Are fans complicit in the NFL’s concussion issue?

How complicit are fans in the NFL’s concussion problem? At the very least, it’s a question that needs to be asked.

For all of the fingers pointed these days around the NFL’s biggest issue — that of player safety and, specifically, concussions — there is one party who has yet to answer for his/her part in it all: the fan.

It feels a bit weird to even propose such an idea that the NFL fan is complicit in the issue. By nature, we’re spectators, citizens on the outside looking in, several steps removed from the action. Of course we don’t have anything to do with it. After all, we’re not on the field. We also aren’t in the huddle, the locker room or around the training staff.

Just because there is distance, however, doesn’t mean there’s not a level of blame to be applied to the NFL fan. Those demanding bread and circuses might not be the ones enslaving the gladiatorial competitors, but the demand is part of the cycle all the same. As football fans, as those cheering and jeering in the stands, we are participating in the cycle of violence, endorsing the show and applying a pressure, even if it’s from thousands of feet (or miles) away.

Last week, future Hall of Famer Tom Brady endured questions of potentially hidden concussions after his wife let slip in an interview that the New England Patriots quarterback had dealt with head trauma just this year. Despite everyone’s desperate attempts to form a bucket brigade to put out the fire, the interview was a reminder of everything we know, even if we technically don’t. No one knew for sure that Brady had a concussion in 2016, yet suddenly we all knew it. These are obvious times.

Another future Hall of Famer confirmed this same idea on Sunday when word broke from former Detroit Lions wide receiver Calvin Johnson that he’d played with secret concussions.

"“Guys get concussions, they don’t tell the coaches,” said Johnson. “It happens. I don’t tell the coach sometimes cause I know I got a job to do. The team needs me out there on the field. And sometimes you allow that to jeopardize yourself, but that’s just the nature of the world.”"

There it is, the key phrase.

“The nature of the world.”

In Johnson’s statement, we begin to discover our own role in the violent cycle on display in the NFL. Johnson doesn’t point the finger directly, and he definitely doesn’t begin there, but we’re mentioned all the same. Johnson rightfully takes the blame himself, knowing he’s the one making the decisions. He also addresses the idea of the team, the coach, the job itself. All of these play important roles in enforcing this idea that grown men should launch themselves at each other for the sake of “something bigger,” that they should risk their own long-term livelihood for a short-term moment of glory.

And then Johnson brings us into it. He says a player will “jeopardize himself.” Why?

“That’s the nature of the world.”

We are a part of that world. We are the ones creating the background noise cheering at the hardest hits, demanding the sacrifices with each ensuing play. We are the ones responding with such vitriol and anger, sometimes talking directly to the player himself if they’re accessible on social media. We give or withhold our money from the economy until we get what we want, until our team does our bidding and lives up to our expectations.

I’ve been there myself, even recently as a Chiefs fan. I’ve scratched my head and paced the room wondering why Alex Smith suddenly decides he doesn’t want to run downfield like he did in 2015. I’ve cheered loudly or even laughed out loud when Eric Berry completely reverses the momentum of a running back. My own emotions and actions are all a part of “the nature of the world,” that world being the concussive entertainment we’ve come to love called American football.

As a fan, I have to admit I’m not sure what to do with this. But at the very least, these days, I’m realizing that the distance that once felt so safe now feels a bit too close for comfort.