>people are not trying to spear other people head first (there are rules explicitly banning this as well as any intentional helmet to helmet contact)

Really? Because someone did just that in the AFC championship a week ago in order to (successfully) take out Rob Gronkowski.

It happens and some people are malicious, but he was penalized and it was considered a dirty hit. The point is that is the only hit of it's type that was seen during the game which contained thousands of collisions.

>...take out Rob Gronkowski.

Context https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwALEoMUHrk.

All of these points ignore the fact that the main source of the issue is the repeated, small blows to the head. Larger blows have a higher tendency to be noticed and treated. Smaller, continuous blows happen dozens of times a game for a lineman.

Many of the more serious impacts occur at high speeds, some at full speed. Special teams (kickoff, punt return, etc) are particularly bad for this. There are players on the payroll that are kept for just this purpose.

Player positions with more high speed impacts aren't necessarily linked to greater lifetime CTE risks because they might have fewer total impacts during their career. Linemen might even be worse off with many more "lesser" impacts. The big high speed hits from a safety draw attention, but they're pretty infrequent. A lineman is pretty much guaranteed a consistent head impact every play.

https://www.inverse.com/article/37934-nfl-funded-study-brain...