If you want to make it to the NFL, you better dedicate your life to it early. Only a few hundred make it every year, and most don’t last. But if you make it big, you’re filthy rich, beyond your wildest dreams – the top 3 earners this year will make more than $80 million. Odds are you’ll end up retiring in your 30s, but you’ll have a lovely nest egg to set you up. That’s why injuries are so terrifying. They can end your career early and keep you from doing the one thing you’ve dedicated your life to.

With how many injuries there’s been this season, the NFL’s dedicated to keeping its star athletes in the game. After Tampa Bay Bucaneers wide receiver, Chris Godwin, suffered a dislocated ankle when he was hip-drop tackled by the Ravens’ Roquan Smith, the NFL decided to issue a $16,883 fine. With the severity of the injury, Godwin’s been ruled out for the rest of the season. Pretty much the only thing he should be focusing on is taking things easy and recovering.

Now, you might be wondering what on earth a hip-drop tackle is. Before this year, most people would be on the same page as you, including a few of the players. It’s basically an illegal tackle where you grab your opponent by the waist, then try to fall to the ground by “dropping” your hips in such a way that your body weight lands on their leg. You can see why it’s a recipe for disaster. According to the NFL, hip-drop tackles are 20 times more likely to cause injury than a regular tackle. Yet the NFL only made them a fine-worthy offense earlier this year in March.

If you’re wondering why that would be the case, it might be because hip-drop tackles weren’t historically as common an occurrence. There’s speculation that it’s the NFL’s own safety protocols that ironically started promoting these unsafe tackles. The NFL has been taking steps to reduce head injuries over the last decade or so, especially since CTE became more of a concern. This means that players have started tackling in a way that keeps their heads from impacting the ground, almost incentivizing hip-drop tackles. It’s unfair to blame all these injuries purely on NFL guidelines though. The sport is ever-evolving, let’s just hope it evolves in a direction that’ll reduce injuries all around.

How will Chris Godwin’s exit impact the Bucs?

This isn’t the first time the Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver has had a leg injury. He previously had an ACL tear in 2021, and a series of hamstring strains going back for years. He knows how to sit injuries out and come back even stronger. But there are two concerns: the state of the Bucs’ campaign this year, and what’s to become of his contract.

Chris Godwin’s started in every Bucs game this season so far, and he looked on track for a 1000-yard season. Just 7 games into the season he’d made 50 receptions for 576 yards, 5 touchdowns among them. Just losing him would have been a bad blow already, but they’re also losing Mike Evans, another wide receiver. Evans aggravated an existing hamstring injury during the same against the Ravens. Evans had also been having a killer year, at 6 touchdowns.

With both wide receivers out, the team will be relying on young guns like Jalen McMillan and Trey Palmer. They’ve played well with Baker Mayfield before, but it remains to be seen how things will pan out. With their next game being a revenge game against the Falcons (who beat them 36-30 just earlier this month) they better get their game faces on, it’ll be a test of how the squad survives the absences.