For many of us among the roughly 40 million Americans hooked on fantasy football, this season is off to a particularly unpleasant start.

Matthew Berry, arguably the nation’s most prominent fantasy football expert, said, “I feel like through four weeks it has been a worse injury year than ever before. Just too many big-name stars going down early.”

Berry acknowledged that “every year there are brutal injuries,” but he said this season has been especially tough.

As one who abhors violence, I’ve always been conflicted about football. The only way I manage to rationalize hours of research on my fantasy lineups, followed by obsessive multi-screen viewing of each week’s games, is to imagine that players, covered as they are from head to toe, are characters in a video game rather than real guys who are being bashed, twisted and concussed.

As part of my research for a book about football in the 1960s, I recently visited the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. Posted on the wall is this statement:

“Player protection is the top priority of the NFL. Since its earliest days, the NFL has continuously taken........

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