Brendon Ayanbadejo has crashed into football's dreaded wedge formation on more kickoffs than he can count during six NFL seasons. There has been pain, pride and self-preservation in every impact.
"Probably half the time I've been a wedge guy," the Ravens' Pro Bowl special-teamer says. "I'm not too fond of going against the wedge. I'm not too fond of it just because the wedge is a thing you have to honor. So I can't just run around it or run by it. I have to engage."
The wedge has long been the NFL's ultimate test of courage and/or sanity. Line up three, four or five of the team's biggest, toughest players in front of the kick return man, send a few kamikaze-types sprinting from the other end of the field and wait for the soul-baring collisions.
This offseason, the NFL decided it had seen enough of those violent impacts. So, two years after Kevin Everett of the Buffalo Bills suffered a life-threatening cervical spine injury covering a kickoff, the league banned the wedge.
The intent is to reduce the number of players getting blown up and carried off on any kickoff.
When the Ravens open training camp in Westminster on July 27, the rule change will be met with equal parts skepticism, relief and indifference.
"I don't particularly think guys were necessarily getting injured any more on that play than any other play," Jerry Rosburg, the Ravens special teams coordinator, said, somewhat skeptically. "There's going to be collisions, no matter what."
Asked about NFL statistics that suggest a higher injury rate on kickoffs than other plays, Rosburg said, "If you torture the numbers long enough, they'll confess to anything."
Still, it is problematic for smaller players - like Ayanbadejo, who weighs less than 230 pounds - to engage bigger players in the wedge. Ayanbadejo said that early in his career he had "stingers" every season from shots he took going against the wedge.
"Yes, I believe it will make it safer," he said. "It's probably better for me. I think it's a good rule change. Did it have to be changed? No. Is it going to make a big impact on the game? Probably not."
Gone is the three-or-more-man wall of humanity, arms linked, ready to take out the other team's gunner.
In its place will be a variety of blocking schemes and some combinations thereof. There are man schemes, zone schemes and now there will be some two-man wedge schemes, something the Ravens experimented with at organized team activities this summer. Rosburg speculated that some teams will have two, two-man wedges.
