Josh Blackman » “A short-yardage play like this — it was first-and-10 from Atlanta’s 12 midway through the second quarter — unfolds in an eye-blink, the time for the play to develop collapsing in direct proportion to the compressed space in which the teams operate. But as Lofton squared his body and closed in to tackle Celek, he committed an instant, and new, mental calculus demanded by the N.F.L.’s crackdown on hits to the head.”

“A short-yardage play like this — it was first-and-10 from Atlanta’s 12 midway through the second quarter — unfolds in an eye-blink, the time for the play to develop collapsing in direct proportion to the compressed space in which the teams operate. But as Lofton squared his body and closed in to tackle Celek, he committed an instant, and new, mental calculus demanded by the N.F.L.’s crackdown on hits to the head.”

September 26th, 2011

“Yes, I’ve lowered my strike zone,” Lofton said in an interview last week. “I didn’t want to hurt myself, but more importantly, I don’t want to hurt my team with a penalty. All I remember was I wanted to make a good, clean tackle; I didn’t want to go for the kill shot. I just wanted to hit him in the legs, chest or stomach. That’s what I was aiming for.”

I think this is what Malcolm Gladwell would call blink.