ORLANDO — The NFL’s competition committee achieved one of two major objectives of the offseason Monday when NFL owners voted at the annual league meetings to ban the swivel hip-drop tackle — a technique that league officials have deemed a great threat to player safety.
According to the agreed upon specific criteria of the now-illegal technique, a swivel hip-drop tackle takes place when a player:
- Grabs a runner with both hands/arms while attempting to make a tackle
- “Unweights himself by swiveling and dropping his hips and/or lower body”
- And then lands on and traps the runner’s leg(s) at or below the knee
Such a tackle will result in a 15-yard penalty and an automatic first down, according to the NFL. If a player brings his opponent to the ground by performing the first two steps but lands off to the side and without swiveling around and landing on the legs or feet of his opponent, such a tackle would be deemed legal. The technique has become more popular in recent years as players look to avoid using their helmets in tackles, which draws penalties and increases the risk of concussions.
League officials felt compelled to take measures to ban the tackle after observing 230 instances of the now-illegal tackle during last season’s games. That averaged out to roughly one occurrence per game, which was up roughly 65 percent from the 2022 season. NFL executive Jeff Miller said 15 tackles led to injuries that caused players to miss at least one game last season.
The rule change received unanimous approval from the owners. However, the NFL Players Association expressed disappointment over the decision to outlaw the tackle. Players worried about the game officials’ ability to correctly and consistently enforce such a tackle in such a fast-paced game. The concern also involves how the rule change would lead to an increase in penalties and fines.
NFL executive vice president Troy Vincent met with members of the NFLPA’s leadership team back in February at the NFL combine and explained the league’s stance. But the players union leaders weren’t offered input on the modification of the rule.
NFL competition committee chairman Rich McKay said on Monday that officials understand the players concerns but stressed, “in our case, we have an obligation from health and safety standpoint to protect players with an unreasonable risk of injury and this one, there’s pure data it’s an unreasonable risk of injury. So that’s why we changed the rule. We’ve made a lot of playing rule proposals and changes over the years on health and safety, and sometimes they’re looked at as though you’re making the game softer. I just don’t agree with that at all. I believe we’re trying to make the game safer. This is the first year that I remember in a long time where we can say that high school football’s participation is up six percent year over year. For us, for me as a life football guy, that is a really important statistic. That’s what we’re trying to drive is participation, whether it’s a girls’ flag, boys’ flight or high school football and we think health and safety plays a big part in that.”
McKay said that every team will receive educational videos that show players the differences between league hip-drop tackles and the illegal swivel hip-drop tackle. He said that coaches also requested the league issue a weekly report that explains each infraction related to the tackle and how and what a player did wrong in each instance. McKay believes that just as players adjusted to reduce the number of horse collar tackles and just as they have reduced the instances in which they lead with their helmet while making tackles, they will make the necessary adjustments to help eliminate the swivel hip-drop tackle.
GO DEEPER
What is a hip-drop tackle and will the NFL and NFLPA agree to ban it?
Meanwhile, the NFL’s owners and coaches remain in discussions related to the modification of the kickoff. The competition committee aims to return the play to relevance while also ensuring lower risk of concussions that stemmed from the traditional kickoff play before teams opted so frequently for touchbacks.
The modification calls for all players on the kicking team to line up at the receiving team’s 40-yard line (five yards away from the receiving team’s nine-man front line) while the kicker still kicks off from his own 35. The goal of this change is to eliminate high speed collisions. The kickoff team defenders wouldn’t be permitted to move until the ball lands on the ground in the “landing zone,” which is inside the receiving team’s 20. Two players would be lined up as return men rather than the usual one. If the ball lands short of the landing zone, the ball would be moved to the receiving team’s 40-yard line just as if a kickoff sails out of bounds. Touchbacks would call for the ball to be moved to the receiving team’s 30, according to the latest modification discussions.
The rule seeks to solve the dramatic decrease in kickoff returns (just 22 percent of 2023 kickoffs were returned) while ensuring that special teams remain an impactful element of the game.
The competition committee and NFL coaches met for four hours on Sunday to discuss the potential change. The NFL has spent the last two years studying the XFL’s kickoff allignment, and special teams coaches have spent the offseason working to find a similar allignment that would best benefit the league. There’s an appetite for a change, but NFL coaches and owners still want greater clarity and continued discussions before approving such a drastic measure.
“Everybody wants to get returns,” Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh said Monday. “So everybody’s on the same page with that. How do you go about doing that? There’s a lot of questions because you know, it’s a big change.”
It’s still possible that the league’s owners could vote to approve the modification during the remaining day of meetings in Orlando. But if not, the motion could be made to table the decision until the next round of owners meetings in May.
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(Photo: Patrick Smith / Getty Images)
2024-03-25 17:22:49
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