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You may have more technical info on this than you're letting on, but is it that the old helmets were better, or is it that players were more hesitant to hit someone full speed with the crown of their helmet while wearing a leather hood?
It's a well-documented phenomenon; you see it with safety features in cars, too. As people feel safer, they act more recklessly. If players played the way that they play today, but wore rawhide helmets, you'd see deaths on the field.
Also, the assertion that we've "gone backward" is incorrect anyway:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_issues_in_American_football#Statistics
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