Oh, smashing definitely happened until recently. There was a huge politically charged media campaign claiming concussions == death and anything (specifically football, it was targeted) where concussions were possible were exactly like ancient Roman blood-sport.

That went on heavily during the Obama years (but it had started earlier). Then they hit on the winning ingredient: they began claiming such a thing is also racist because black people play sports, making this actually literally slaves being forced to kill each other for white amusement. The instances of them calling a wide receiver with a $11mil contract a slave were numerous and pointed out as ludicrous every time.

But it didn't matter, the campaign wore down the league who tried to sue for peace by banning every kind of effective hit a tackler could possibly make. Making the game so rigged for offense that it was more sensible to stand back, let the quarterback do whatever he wanted, stand back, let the receiver make the catch, and THEN figure out what to do. The game got very VERY boring and not at all football very quickly.

The players adapted to this (though many argued loudly at the time that this was destroying the game), by adopting strategies of baiting penalties, much like you see in soccer for the same reason. Without the threat of getting hurt standing in the way, ludicrous plays are now the norm, and God help you if you accidentally clobber someone who basically ran into you because he didn't care you were there.

I blame this for also creating the conditions where a talentless grifter like Colin Capernik could single-handedly turn the entire league into his own personal BLM platform.