I fell in love with this Twitter thread from Barstool Carl about the single bar that old-school NFL kickers used to wear.

Does that not tickle your fancy a bit? If it doesn’t, this will; The Vertical Facemask, and I ain’t talking about covid masks

This is when football was football. Period.

I totally understand that these types of facemasks have been replaced cause of the easy access for opponent to eye gauge you ’til you’re blind, but that’s not the point. The point is that if you wear one of these old school vertical bar facemasks while on defense you’re a certified barbarian.

(see below for more badasses in vertical bar facemasks)

Mean Joe? Yeah, next question
LT wore a vert bar… ever heard of him?

Yes, I understand every defensive player wore them back in the day, not just the great ones. There’s just something about a guy in vertical bar that says “I’m gonna have your ass all Sunday long”. It’s like the enforcers in the NHL who don’t wear a visor.

My proposal is that every team must have AT LEAST 1 (one) guy who wears a vertical bar facemask. But here’s the catch, if you try and eye gauge the VB man, you get flagged and have to face the VB man in an Oklahoma drill. It’s the perfect combination of hurting your team, and then being publicly humiliated.

This probably won’t ever happen, but can someone make football visually appealing again? Maybe our guy, and recurring Bookies Basement guest Doug Costin of the Jacksonville Jaguars could make that happen

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