I agree that if they treated him like a regular player he wouldn’t die… he would be taken out the game with a concussion… probably on the kickoff (where many of the biggest hits happen)…
but as I said in the first post if he had to stay in and play as many plays as a guy like Ray Lewis plays (just like the NFL player would not be able to leave the battle after his first time he got injured) he wouldn’t make it… his head would be jelly…
Neither do you. Why would he sustain more concussions?
Now that would be interesting - wonder if you could mod Total War to put in NFL-sized soldiery. 
For the same reason a NFL player wouldn’t last very long in a ancient battle… he would have no Idea what was going on and would be easy pickings for the more experienced players… he has no idea how to protect himself in this situation… it would only take a few helmet to helmet hits from a FB leading a block or a G coming down on a trap before before he would be seriously injured… if he continued… he would die…
I am still on the side of the NFL players in the original scenario and yet I still don’t think this this true as long as the rules are followed. NFL play is designed explicitly so that people aren’t permanently injured even for plays that go bad. The goal is to tackle and temporarily disable rather than permanently injure (this mindset and training would obviously be a huge problem in actual warfare). NFL players have to show restraint these days because they are so big and strong it is a real risk that they can permanently injure another player if that level of restraint isn’t followed. The penalties for taking a greater than necessary shot at another player have been severe ever since college players getting paralyzed or killed was an endemic problem in the early in the 20th century.
The New Orleans Saints head coach got suspended for a season for paying a bounty for injuries sustained to other team’s players. It simply isn’t allowed now without severe penalties so a weaker and smaller person would be brought down quickly but wouldn’t die or probably even be badly hurt in the short term. It is almost always high school and college players that get killed killed or paralyzed on the field because they face opponents that take cheap hits but the pros do not do that as a general rule. Taking those types of hits in the long term would be a different story but that isn’t what we are talking about.
To those of you who say that it would be worse for rugby, that simply isn’t true. The main feature of American football pads are that they allow much greater forceful hits than would be possible otherwise. Even the pros can’t take it over the long-term and the majority get some degree of long-term disability from it if they play for more than a few seasons.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0jMWdL4ZR8
This is a great look at what kind of trauma can occur from the hits that happen in the football…
I agree… in a real world situation it wouldn’t come to death…
The point I am trying to make is that the original question wants the NFL player to go back and replicate the soldiers experience… If the soldier was to come to the future and replicate what a starting NFL ILB does he would get seriously injured and if he tried to force it through it very well could lead to his death… I will back off the 99% fatality rate I mentioned earlier… I guess some of the time his leg would get broken and he would not be able to continue… but there is no way that he finishes the game…
All in all I think a NFL player does a much better job fitting in to a life in the Legion than an ancient soldier does fitting into the NFL…
Yes. The thing that the “In rugby, we don’t have to wear sissy pads” crowd don’t appreciate, is that in American football, there are far more situations where the teams line up face-to-face and charge full speed at each other.
If rugby were more like that, then injuries would be far more common and padding would be regulated in short order.
And I’m saying that as a Brit who’s basically on the fence regarding which sport I prefer.
I also agree that our tough-as-nails 5’7 Roman soldier would be lucky to be stretchered off in the first couple of plays.
He would have no idea how to brace himself correctly, and as a novice he would not be anticipating the kind of things that can happen. Also his height would be a huge disadvantage as players would largely climb over and drop on him.
Lucky to be stretchered off…with just a concussion, I meant.
I mean, he’s going to be stretchered off whatever the nature of his injuries. :smack:
People are just tossing around the phrase “Roman Legion” as if it meant exactly one static thing, unchanging through the whole history of Rome. But that history lasts about eight hundred years, which is the distance between us and the signing of the Magna Carta. The early Republic had soldiers who fought much more like Greeks, in tight spear wall phalanxes with some heavy armor, and some cavalry and auxiliary slingers and archers to skirmish before the main battle and on the wings. It wasn’t until about 100 B.C. that Gaius Marius reformed the legions into something we’d recognize as classically Roman, men with uniform armor, short swords, throwing spears, and the like, supported by archers, slingers, and other light troops, with some light and heavy cavalry supporting them. Over the next few hundred years, cavalry greatly increased in importance and the legions almost entirely lost their Italian character, as citizenship was granted to any number of Germans, Gauls, Iberians, Greeks, and other non-Italians. By the end of the Western Empire (late 400s AD, by most reckonings) barbarian cavalry, sometimes Roman citizens but just as often non-citizen mercenaries, had started to dominate the field, presaging the dominance of knights in the Middle Ages of Europe.
All of these different armies were referred to, both in contemporary and modern documents, as “Legions”. It’s worth noting that there’s a pretty wide variance.
I agree that if you just tossed an NFL linebacker into a Roman legion of any era, he’s going to be torn to shreds in short order. He might have a better shot in the gladiatorial arena, really; that’s a deadly, bloody, and cruel game, but it’s still a game with rules, and modern athletes are really, really good at using those sorts of rules. Besides that, he won’t have to learn how to mesh his fighting with teammates, for the most part, and his massive size and strength will be a big asset against the single person or maybe pair that he’s facing.
If you gave the guy a few months to adapt, to learn how to handle the massive change in the sort of combat that he’s going to be fighting, I think he’d be adequate, with his lack of experience roughly balanced by his enormous size, strength and physical reflexes. The very best soldiers in the army could still whip him, I’m sure, but the Roman military machine did a very good job beating new recruits into fighting shape quickly, and an elite modern athlete will be perfectly placed to learn that training.
If a modern athlete grew up with the same sorts of culture that a Roman would experience, with the same sorts of deprivations and hardships, and still managed to grow to the same enormous size and strength, with the same extreme reflexes and physical proficiency, he’d likely be one of the greatest grunt soldiers in the history of the ancient world. We’d also have never heard of him. It’s pretty hard to distinguish yourself in the sorts of battles, where individual fighting is what gets you killed and carefully working with your squadmates is what gets the other guy killed instead. The closest thing to merit for individual actions that I can think of is the honor awarded for being the first man over the wall of an enemy town, at which our NFL player might excel until someone gutted him for trying.
All of that assumes the sorts of highly disciplined armies that you’d see in Rome, in Greece, in the Eastern states like Persia, and (I believe) in China and India. In a German or Gaullic army of the same era, our NFL player might fare a lot better. That sort of wild fighting, man-to-man instead of maniple-to-maniple, greatly favored men with massive physical size and strength for their ability to not just kill an opponent but terrify his friends while doing it. The Romans lost battles to the Gauls and the Germans, too, don’t forget, and when they did, it was usually because the barbarians managed to break the famous Roman formation and discipline, then maul the remaining Roman soldiers who were ill-equipped to fight outside of their tightly regimented system. Lots of the great Roman victories that we’re discussing in this thread where Roman legionaries held their formations and triumphed over a bunch of physically enormous barbarians were preceded by massive Roman losses, like the battles at Burdigala and Arausio where the Romans failed to keep their heads and did not present a united, disciplined front to the enemy.
In short, while the Romans frequently manage to defeat numerically and physically superior German tribes, those German tribe won some of the battles, too. There’s a reason that the Roman historians talk about how scary those giant Germans were, besides the fact that they’re glorifying their own side: sometimes being giant, terrifying, and individually gigantic won the Germans a battle.
But still, most battles that were lost against Germanic barbarian, including Teutoburg, were lost not so much because of the great size, but because of tactical considerations in nwhich size played a minor role.
Another thing, we don’t want to overstate how “tough” an ancient soldier would be. Yeah, he’s tough compared to a guy who works in an air conditioned office all day. But he’s going to be tough in the sense that migrant farm workers are tough. March all day every day with a heavy pack in the blistering sun and choking dust, and then stand in line without flinching as your buddies drop around you, that’s tough. But it’s much more mental toughness than physical toughness. Physically he’s going to be in the same league as the people of today who do hard physical labor all day every day. And that includes having all sorts of physical problems–missing teeth, missing fingers, chronic infections, and so on. And none of that mattered as long as he could keep pace and obey orders and stand in line.
I doubt anyone here thinks that. I personally don’t see how the difference in an early Roman legion and a post Marian reforms one would have anything to do with the topic at hand. Cohorts, maniples, even tactics and weaponry I don’t feel would affect the outcome, as the main issue here is our NFL player’s lack of experience with any of those weapons and tactics.
The Romans were outnumbered over 2 to 1 in both cases. Not only that, but the tribes who were victorious were not comprised of NFL running backs (or even fullbacks). They were the warrior caste of the tribe (along with other support I’m sure). Who knew Roman tactics and knew the weapons and how to use them (I’m sure many of them were veterans, if not downright killers).
Great post, appleciders.
Id like to return to a point mentioned upthread. Hand-to-hand combat --let alone contemporary rifle combat at a distance–must be one of the most paralyzing skill*-inhibiting* situations imaginable, both for fear of losing your life and the sheer visceral spilled organs, limbs, etc. Today the ability to function in such situations–including, of course, continuing to kill if you can–must be trained specifically and intensively.
Even with Roman recruits, back when, supposedly, men were men (:)), it no doubt was an issue. How much of it was prepared for in regular training or by intensive on-the-job training, as it were, I have no idea.
So, let me vault over (heh) our NFL offensive line, and make it simpler. Any answers to this might be back-applied, with appropriate distinctions, to the NFL.
All US ground troops, I believe, are trained in man-to-man combat. All are issued rifles onto which a bayonet can be attached. think that’s true–if not, backdate to a time when it was true; in any event, soldiers are trained to fight with handheld blades.
How well would a random (insert US unit/size here) fare in a battle with a random (insert Roman unit here). I think the analysis might differ in degree with the following considerations:
The Roman unit is green
The Roman unit comprises veterans
The US unit is green
The US unit comprises veterans
[FWIW: All veterans’ descriptions or fictional recreations of hand-to-hand combat (eg Platoon, The Thin Red Line, Saving Private Ryan, All Quiet on the Western Front (the novel), have filled me with a notion of unimaginable horror. Part of what prompted this post.]
Obligatory Anchorman hand-to-hand combat melee.
Unless I’m misunderstanding your question I think that the Roman soldiers would have a major advantage, no question about it - you’re asking how they’d match up when both sides have the melee weapons of their choice/training?
The Romans soldiers practiced all the time with swords and spears and whatnot because that’s what they had. Modern soldiers probably spend an equivalent amount of time practicing with with their rifles and some minimal amount of time training bayonet. The slogan is “Every Marine a rifleman”, not “Every Marine a knife-fighter”.
Only killers eh? So, that narrows it down to about 10% of the NFL.
Heh
Back in 1989 in Basic Training I had one afternoon of hand to hand training. One morning on the bayonet course. That was it. I always had combat jobs but I’ve never been in infantry. Over the last few years they have introduced Army Combatives. It’s basically MMA/Brizilian Jujutsu. It does a lot for aggressiveness and what they call Battlemind but I personally don’t think it is very useful on the battlefield. Any Roman unit will have much more training in hand to hand than any US unit from the modern age. Probably going back to the musket era. Training with firearms is just more important and useful. Hand to hand will always be an afterthought.