Can NFL tackling rules be reasonably altered to make the game that much safer?
Kinda spitballing here, just trying to hash out some ideas. Here's part of the inspiration for this topic, from
SI's 2011 NFL Preview issue:
Good, hard, sharp, and sure tackling is the very essence of a successful defense, and no player should hope to be placed upon a team unless he has become adept in this most important of football fundamentals. No team is going to be severely beaten, even if it has no offense at all, if it is composed of eleven good tacklers ...
—GLENN SCOBEY (POP) WARNER, May 1927
On a November Sunday in Cleveland last year, Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez completed a pass to wideout Braylon Edwards in the shallow left flat. Browns cornerback Sheldon Brown jumped forward to perform the essential job that Pop Warner had described 83 years earlier: Tackle the ballcarrier. (Huddle. Repeat.) Football plays can end in various ways: with touchdowns, field goals, incompletions, fair catches, dead-ball penalties and stepping out-of-bounds. But most end with the ballcarrier being taken to the ground by the defense. It is absolute. After a tackle, whistles are blown, the ball is spotted and the offense must draw up another play and start anew.
But tackling has also become one of the most uncertain elements in the modern NFL, altered not only by evolutions in strategy (sideline-to-sideline passing attacks supplanting between-the-numbers power running) and performance (more elusive athletes with each passing year), but also most recently by rules changes designed to protect ballcarriers from injuries by limiting concussive, helmet-to-helmet hits. The pure, unbridled, bone-jarring tackle is a fading memory.
As Brown moved up on Edwards, his instincts told him to blast headlong with little regard for the consequences, tactical or physical. There are two basic ways to tackle: either "break down" into a balanced crouch to reduce the possibility of getting juked in the open field, or barrel into the ballcarrier at full speed. Brown had played his first seven NFL seasons for the Eagles under the late defensive coordinator Jim Johnson, who gave his troops only one option.
"Coach Johnson taught us to never break down, just keep running through like knives," says Brown. "And if I miss on the correct side, one of my teammates will be right behind me, running like a bat out of you know where, and he'll make the hit and maybe force a turnover. One of the knives will hit." (Ravens coach John Harbaugh, who worked under Johnson in Philadelphia, says, "Arrow through snow" that's what Jim used to say: Attack like an arrow through snow.")
As an Eagle, Brown lived Johnson's credo. In January 2007 he laid out Saints running back Reggie Bush with a blowup hit by driving hard upfield on a swing pass, a shot so monumental it made the cover of SI six months later. But here, against the Jets, Brown hesitated. The previous month, after the notorious Oct. 17 afternoon so packed with violent, concussive hits that it became known as Black Sunday, the NFL announced it would stringently enforce rules against head shots. That clouded Brown's mind. "I tried to break down and then come up," says Brown of the play on Edwards. "He dipped his shoulder, and that got him lower than me, and I took the brunt of the hit. They talk about defenseless receivers. I put myself in a defenseless position, and I hurt my shoulder. I was confused with all the changes, and I made an adjustment." (Though his forward momentum was stopped, Edwards never did go down—four other Cleveland defenders threw themselves into the play, and the whistle blew with the Jets receiver still standing.)
It seems clear that certain types of tackling techniques that are physically riskier than others. The question I'm raising is this: can safer tackling techniques be legislated within the rules of the game of football? Here are some speculative rule changes that come to mind -- haven't considered all angles or potential game-play consequences, just brainstorming:
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Illegal for tacklers to leave their feet if their shoulder, chest, or head touches the ball carrier -- this means that if DB wants to blow up a WR over the middle, they cannot launch themselves like a missle. They can still run through the WR, but the fact that the ground dissipates some of the force should lessen the impact of these over-the-middle tackles. Note that the way this rule is worded, the intent is to still allow diving at a ball carrier's feet, or a last-second dive to grab a jersey, or tackle attempts like that. So long as there's no leaving the feet to launch the upper body into a ball carrier, the tackle is legal.
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Illegal for shoulder, chest, or head of tackler to touch the ball carrier if at least one hand does not touch the ball carrier -- I'd call this the "wrap-up" rule, and it also aims to discourage launching-type tackles. I considered proposing that BOTH hands must touch the ball carrier if the tackler's upper-body conacts the ball carrier, but I was thinking that might be a little too restrictive. Maybe the two-hand version of the rule could be instituted for QBs in the pocket.
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Institute a tackling "strike zone" -- The tackler's upper body (shoulders, helmet, chest) can only contact the ball carrier's body between the shoulders and knees. This one is actually partially in place, as explicit head shots are forbidden. Diving at a player's feet to trip them up with the hands or arms would still be legal.
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Relax the pass-intereference rules in favor of the defense -- Saw this proposed elsewhere. The idea is that with pass-interference rules so strongly favoring the offense, defenses have adopted the strategy ot taking hard shots at receivers to jar caught balls loose. Letting DBs guard routes more physically would give the defense another option. My corollary is to perhaps change the 5-yard-bump zone into a 10-yard zone, or even 15 yards -- bring back true bump-&-run coverage.
So ... are these kinds of proposals (not necessarily these specific ones) reasonable? How much safer can tackling rules help make the game? Enough to get us to credible, player-approved 18-game seasons? And what kinds of game-safety changes do others envision the NFL adopting in the near future?