Safety First As a defensive back with a Pro Bowl resume, Dashon Goldson was a regular on NFL highlight reels. But will league fines make Goldson and other safeties change their hard-hitting style?

     The words “hard-hitting” usually proceed Dashon Goldson’s name every time it appears in the print media. The safety for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quickly earned the description during his stint with the San Francisco 49ers, which came with two Pro Bowl appearances at safety. But on the day we visited him at his home in Tampa last season, he had just found out he had been suspended for a game for what was deemed a helmet-to-helmet hit of Roddy White of the Atlanta Falcons.
     As Goldson’s television was tuned to ESPN’s SportsCenter, commentators admonished Goldson’s hit. “Man, they’ll say anything,” Goldson says. “They don’t even know me.” And so, we tried to get to know Goldson.
     Goldson’s mom sits in the living room as the rest of the NFL highlights play. “That’s the toughest part,” Goldson says. “My family gets upset by this stuff because they know my intentions.” Those intentions are to play the game the way he has been taught as a child— a game his parents never wanted him to play.
     “My mom and dad are from Jamaica,” Goldosn says. “To them, football is soccer. My dad new a little bit about basketball, too. That’s what he wanted me to play. But my heart was always in football.”
     When Goldson was 10 years old, he lived across the street from a park where kids played Pop Warner Football. “I was at the park with some of the kids before their practice started,” he says. “They were playing this game called Throw Up Tackle. So the kids would throw the ball up in the air, and whoever got the ball would get tackled. It was everyone for themselves. So I used to hit those kids pretty hard. So when the coaches saw me, they said. “Do you play football? (laughs) Do you want to play?”
     The coaches got the sign up sheet and told Goldson that the fee to play was $100. Having just received money for his 10^th birthday, Goldson ran across the street to his house and used his birthday money to sign up and play, keeping it a secret from his family for a few weeks.  But Goldson couldn’t keep his hard-hitting ways a secret for long.
     “Mom found out when me and my sister were playing in the garage. I used to hide my football pads in the garage, and my sister wanted to put the pads on. She did. We lined up against one another and ran smack into one another. She started crying and told my mom. (laughs) But my mom let me play after that.
     Goldson’s been hitting people ever since. After reaching the Pro Bowl twice with the San Francisco 49ers. Goldson signed a five-year. $41.25 million contract with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Given the nature of his style of play, one would think such a contract was paid because teams were in need of someone with Goldson’s skill set. It is that skill set of smashmouth football that has been marketed through the same network that admonished him earlier in the afternoon, through NFL segments such as “Jacked Up,” highlighting the biggest collisions of the week.
     Now that concussions have rightfully become a major topic in all sports, players like Goldson find themselves vilified for doing the very thing they were hired to do—intimidate the other team’s skill players through legal hitting.
     “The problem now is that there’s no way to hit someone without being criticized,” Goldson says. “You have to try to adjust, but how? You can go low hit, and guys in the knees, but those are cheap shots. It’s going to cause more injuries. The way the game is changing, this is the NFL. It’s their league. You have to adjust to stay in it, I guess.”
     At the speed by which today’s game is played, a target is never stationary enough. In an MMQB.com column last year, tight end Jermichael Finley explained his though process prior to a hit by a Cleveland Browns player that nearly ended his career. “It all happened very quickly,” Finley said. “I remember seeing the defender out of the corner of my eye, and I intentionally lowered my head and shoulder to protect my knees.” If an offensive player is intentionally lowering his head into the defender’s strike zone, what is he to do?
     “You’re trying to hit a moving target,” Goldson says. “You have a split second to make a decision. Do you wrap him up? Hit him low? There are so many different tackling positions, so it makes it that much harder. The ball carrier may lower his head, spin, he can cause you to bump heads, whatever the case may be. But it shouldn’t be a fine or suspension, it’s not fair.”
     And that’s the case that Goldson and many of his comrades at the safety position are trying to make. The league is trying to legislate the very hits that coaches have taught and encouraged safeties to make. On several occasions, the hits that have resulted in fines and suspensions were not even considered worthy of penalties on the field.  And there’s no question what teammates and fans want to see.
     “In my position, you have to be a tough guy, because you’re the last guy on defense,” Goldson says. “You have the opportunity to get those big hits, those momentum shifters, but you definitely have to adjust. It’s very hard, to be honest. It’s rough because there’s a reason why I got to the place where I am. I’ve been taught to hit this way since I was 10. It’s a game I grew to love. It’s a way for me to take care of my family, and now it’s costing me. It’s costing us. When they see the fans going against it, I think they might change things back a bit. It’s hurting our sport.”
     In the meantime, off the field, Goldson continues to try to be the man his family knows best. His foundation, The Highest Point Foundation, continues to put together camps and programs for kids to keep them off the streets and channeling their energy productively. As an entrepreneur, Goldson has taken a keen interest in real estate. He also owns the Smo King Lounge, a popular cigar spot in Los Angeles. And as we see first hand at his home, he truly is a family man to his girlfriend Ashley and their young daughter, Charly, who carries daddy’s football around the house.
     Goldson hopes to help lead Tampa Bay football back to its winning ways. But he has one last message for everyone. “Don’t judge me on the fines,” he says. “It’s been hard right now. The league is portraying me as a bad guy, whereas a few years ago, I was a guy who was doing it right. Look at me as a football player and a guy who goes out there to play hard every week and do the best I can. Every day that I wake up, you can’t take this stuff for granted. A lot of people have dreams to be a professional player. Being able to provide for my family, taking care of them, giving back to the community, I’m still living the dream.”