SmashMouth

Thanks to a broken collarbone on a run-of-the-mill sack, the Green Bay Packers are without Aaron Rodgers. Their rivals in the NFC North, the Chicago Bears, are without Jay Cutler thanks to a bum leg, which also wasn't the result of some sort of illegal hit.

Game after game, NFL quarterbacks get sacked, get hurt -- and miss starts. Of the 15 games on this week's schedule, nine -- 60 percent -- feature at least one team that has been forced to change its quarterback because of injury this season.

One of the two teams with a bye, St. Louis, lost its No. 1 guy, 2010 top overall draft pick Sam Bradford, for the season. Bradford, who tore a ligament in his left knee last month, is one of nine quarterbacks on injured reserve in 2013, the second most through 10 weeks in any of the past 15 seasons, according to STATS.

Amid those regular reminders of the dangers facing players at the sport's marquee position, the league's competition committee will take a look this offseason at whether to expand rules that protect the QB, NFL vice president of officiating Dean Blandino said Thursday.

"Should he always get protection from low hits or head hits, regardless of the posture he's presenting?" Blandino said in a telephone interview. "Part of the conversation will be: Should that protection be expanded to all times when the quarterback has the ball in the pocket?"

The committee will review position-by-position injury data and go over video from games, a regular process between seasons.

"Currently the quarterback is as protected now as he's ever been," Blandino said, "but I think that's been the case for eight or nine years."

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