Why Hasn't Kelsay Been Cut?

I believe the league requires a player to have an eye doctor sign off on photophobia before allowing a player to wear a tinted visor. As someone who is photophobic (and I don’t like cameras either) let me shed some, um, light on why we don’t see WRs and perhaps DLs with tinted visors.

Human vision is predicated on light in that we only see objects when light is reflected off of them. Tinting, whether sunglasses, visors or darkened windows in your vehicle limit the amount of light that reaches your eyes. Different colored tinting, by the way, cuts out different wavelengths of light and many people who are photophobic would do better with, say, a redish hue than grey….because grey cuts out all wavelengths fairly evenly while another color will cut out some wavelengths almost entirely while letting others pass through unfettered. It’s why some people really like wearing those yellowish ‘driving glasses’ you sometimes see on TV.

The good news for a photophobe is that the tinting alleviates symptoms of photophobia, most importantly the dull throbbing headaches most commonly associated with the condition. The bad news is that tinting—particularly colors like grey that cut out all wavelengths evenly—simultaneously reduces acuity. For example, imagine reading the eye chart at the eye doctor’s with sunglasses. You’d likely lose a line or two on the acuity chart. If you didn’t know that acuity isn’t really all that important for driving (visual fields are far more important—and never tested by the DMV) you might get scared when you think of the fact that many of use are at the bottom end of the legal eye performance limit for driving (20/40) and almost everyone then puts on sunglasses when they drive which drops their acuity a line or two. But I digress, because that’s what I do….

A WR has to catch a fast moving object while he himself is in motion and trying to keep track of any DBs who are about to take his head off. Reducing his acuity, which is vital for catching the ball (the peripheral vision is assigned the task of watching everything else), would hurt a WRs overall performance. So, if a WR is photophobic his options are to put up with the symptoms or find a new line of work. Well, that’s not entirely true. He could get a tinted visor that cut out the specific wavelength(s) of light that caused him problems but let in all of the other wavelengths. He would then not have headaches and also wouldn’t see a drop in his visual acuity.

But his visor might be pink.

Anquan Boldin wears a visor
Julius Peppers wears a visor
Chris Canty wears a visor
Mike Goff (offensive lineman) wears a visor
Bobby McCray wears a visor
Santonio Holmes wears a visor, I think

The guy this post is about wears a visor.

With the options of taking a reduced salary—but likely a new multi-year contract—or no salary at all when the Bills cut him, you’d have to think that Kelsay would accept the reduced salary and multi-year deal. Besides, if the Bills cut him his contract is null and void and any team that picked him up would sign him to a lower paying multi-year contract. I don’t see it as an issue.

He’s only due about 3.5M next year. Thats very reasonable for a 5+ sack DE.

There’s no salary cap, and he’s only scheduled to make $3.5M….

I’m all for using Kelsay to move up in a round. Using Whiter and Kelsay to move up in a round? Probably not….

Swapping Buffalo’s 4th round pick and Kelsay plus Philly’s 6th might let entice Philly to part with 88. Buffalo would have a pair of thirds, no 4th, and just one 6th.

But at first glance, I wanted it to be from Tremors.

You should have used the pre-CGI version of the sarlacc that looked like Legos.

Or used this picture: