The NFL is considering eliminating one of the more dangerous plays in the league.
Seven months after the NFL Players Association came out against the NFL’s consideration to ban the “Hip-Drop” tackle, the league is once again coming against that play to get rid of it.
The play comes about when a pursuing player takes down a ball carrier from behind and lands on the back of their legs. The tackler twists their body and drops their body weight on the lower legs of the opposing player. That type of tackle can and will cause serious injury.
League executive Jeff Miller told reporters this week that the hip drop tackle increases the risk of injury by 25 times and added the NFL needs to get the play “out of the game.”
“It is an unforgiving behavior and one that we need to try to define and get out of the game,” Miller said, via the Associated Press. “To quantify it for you, we see an injury more or less every week in the regular season on the hip-drop.”
Chairman of the NFL’s competition committee Rick McKay agrees with Miller’s stance.
“What’s happening on the hip-drop is the defender is encircling tackling the runner and then swinging their weight and falling on the side of their leg, which is their ankle or their knee,” McKay explained.
“When they use that tactic, you can see why they do, because it can be a smaller man against a bigger man and they’re trying to get that person down because that’s the object of the game. But when they do it, the runner becomes defenseless. They can’t kick their way out from under. And that’s the problem. That’s where the injury occurs. You see the ankle get trapped underneath the weight of the defender.”
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You can look back to Week Four when the Seattle Seahawks played the New York Giants and Geno Smith was trying to run out of bounds with Giants defender Isaiah Simmons in pursuit. Simmons proceeded to hip-drop tackle Smith out of bounds and the latter ended up missing the rest of the first half with a knee injury.
“[It was] a dirty play,” Smith said after the game. “Dirty play. You guys could see it. It was a dirty play. There’s no place in this sport for that. And, you know, hopefully something happens. But other than that, the grace of God allowed me to come back into this game…
“… I don’t respect that type of stuff, you know what I mean? There’s no need for that type of stuff. It’s a hard-fought game out there. We’re all battling. But no need to take shots at guys running out of bounds on the sideline.”
