Jan 26, 2013, Honolulu, HI, USA; Pro Football Hall of Fame running backs Eric Dickerson (left) and Marshall Faulk at the 2013 Pro Bowl All-Star Block Party on Kalakaua Ave. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

The NFL has proposed a rule change for next season that won’t allow runners to lower their heads when initiating contact with a defender. This potential rule change has received a lot of negative reactions on social media and now one of the greatest running backs of all time, Marshall Faulk, is speaking out.

“This is a joke,” Faulk said on NFL Network, via PFT. “If you’re a ball carrier and you’re trying to protect yourself, you’re going to duck. . . . I understand they want safety and I’m all for safety within the game. But it can’t just be some old guys in the room who didn’t carry a football making rules that are really going to affect how this game is being played. I just don’t understand.”

The thought behind the rule change is that helmets are being used as weapons. They’ve cracked down on helmet to helmet hits in the past few years, especially on quarterbacks and defenseless receivers. So why not just eliminate helmets if they are the problem.

“Take the helmets off. Let’s be honest, if you think the helmet is a weapon, take it off. Because I know the helmet on my head is not being used to head butt anyone, it’s being used to protect myself,” Faulk said.

December 18, 2011; St. Louis, MO, USA; St. Louis Rams player and Hall of Fame running back Marshall Faulk speaks to the crowd as he is honored with a hall of fame ring and his name is added to the wall of fame during half time of a game against the Cincinnati Bengals at the Edward Jones Dome. Cincinnati defeated St. Louis Rams 20-13. Mandatory Credit: Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports

The last time the Super Bowl was in New Orleans was 11 years ago at Super Bowl XXXVI and it had the St. Louis Rams taking on the New England Patriots. The Patriots eventually went on to win their first of 3 Super Bowls behind some kid named Tom Brady and a leg belonging to Adam Vinatieri, who put a game winning field goal through the uprights.

But later in time we found out that the New England Patriots and head coach Bill Belichick videotaped opposing teams practices and walk throughs. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell punished the Patriots for that incident, involving the New York Jets, and has maintained that there is no evidence they did this before the Super Bowl.

Marshall Faulk thinks they cheated and stole a ring from him and his Rams teammates.

“All of my memories about playing the game is all good feelings,” Faulk said in an interview with Tom Curran. “I only remember the Super Bowl I won in Atlanta (after the 1999 season). I couldn’t even conjure up the feelings of what I felt after the game (against the Patriots). I’m sure I was heartbroken and maybe a little upset but when you talk Super Bowl, all of my feelings go directly to winning.”

It was brought up that he has an “anti-Patriots” reuptation in his role on NFL Network as an analyst, some call it bitterness.

“They misunderstand,” Faulk corrected. “Am I over the loss? Yeah, I’m over the loss. But I’ll never be over being cheated out of the Super Bowl. That’s a different story. I can understand losing a Super Bowl, that’s fine . . . But how things happened and what took place. Obviously, the commissioner gets to handle things how he wants to handle them but if they wanted us to shut up about what happened, show us the tapes. Don’t burn ‘em.”

Goodell destroyed the tapes after reviewing them and passing down sanctions on the Patriots organization.

“Obviously, the commissioner gets to handle things how he wants to handle them but if they wanted us to shut up about what happened, show us the tapes. Don’t burn ‘em,” Faulk said.

Seems fair enough, and certainly if it were true he wouldn’t want to deal with an NCAA like situation where you vacate bowl wins. If the Rams were cheated what would Goodell do? Revoke a Super Bowl win? What a mess that’d be, I’d burn the tapes punish them for regular season games they taped and maintain that they didn’t do it before that Super Bowl as well.

Faulk though says the proof is in pudding or the game tape.

“I know, in that game, in the red zone, the plays we ran, most of them we hadn’t ran most of those plays that year,” Faulk noted. “And a couple of plays on third down that we walked through also . . .  Any time that I was offset, I was always stationary. And we had creating motioning in the backfield at the same depth on the other side of the field. And they created a check for it. It’s just little things like that. It’s either the best coaching in the world when you come up with situations that you had never seen before. Or you’d seen it and knew what to do.”

Cris Carter should have been a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

And yet another Hall of Fame vote passes without the entrance of Cris Carter into Canton.

Or, in other words, the Hall of Fame voters screw things up yet again.

Not having the second-best wide receiver to ever play the game in the Hall of Fame is a complete joke. I can’t even articulate just how pathetic this entire process is and just how stupid the majority of these voters must be.

Let’s take a look at this year’s class: Deion Sanders, Marshall Faulk, Shannon Sharpe, Les Richter, Chris Hanburger, Richard Dent, and Ed Sabol were the seven to get in.

Throw Hanburger and Richter out of the discussion because they were the Senior Committee nominees and those guys are almost always locks to get in. Also throw Faulk and Sanders out of the discussion because everyone could tell five years into their careers they were going to be first-ballot Hall of Fame players.

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