The NFL is walking a fine line between player safety and over-policing the game

Only a few hours after a fractured right ankle prematurely ended his season two years ago, Kenyan Drake’s frustration spilled onto social media.

The Las Vegas Raiders running back challenged the NFL to do more to protect ball carriers from a “specific style of tackling.”

Drake was injured when Washington defensive tackle Daniel Wise hauled him down as he crossed the line of scrimmage on an off-tackle running play. Wise grabbed Drake around the midsection and violently yanked backward, pulling his own legs up off the ground, dropping his 285-pound body onto the running back’s lower right leg and pinning it at an awkward angle.

“If the emphasis is to protect the players, this should be an illegal form of tackling like a horse collar,” Drake wrote that evening. “We lose players weekly to high ankle sprains and broken bones but the league would rather flag players for erroneous taunting penalties. Let’s get the priorities together.”

Twenty-two months later, the tackling technique that landed Drake on the back of a cart now appears to be squarely in the NFL’s crosshairs. League executive Jeff Miller said Tuesday that the NFL competition committee is looking to outlaw these hip-drop tackles because research shows they produce an injury rate 25 times higher than a typical tackle.

When the tackler’s full body weight lands on a ball carrier’s leg, the primary concern is the knee and ankle. The pinning of the leg and twisting of the body can result in the ball carrier rupturing knee ligaments or spraining or fracturing his ankle.

Any rule change that the NFL makes surely would be far more popular among quarterbacks or running backs than those who have to tackle them. Many defensive players argue that there are already too many rules limiting how they can legally bring down a ball carrier and that adding more rules only further skews the game in favor of the offense and bogs it down with more penalties.

Darren Woodson doesn’t recall ever hearing the phrase “hip-drop tackle” during his 12 seasons as a standout safety for the Dallas Cowboys. In those days, pulling a ball carrier down in a way that pinned his legs and twisted his body was simply known as a tackle.

To Woodson, the NFL considering penalizing defensive players for hip-drop tackles isn’t just “excessive.” The three-time Super Bowl champ argues it also “isn’t going to stop those tackles from happening.” Woodson says defenders who are trying to wrap up a ball carrier streaking past them will do whatever it takes not to get dragged downfield or be left grasping at air.

“Your job depends on getting the guy to the ground,” Woodson told Yahoo Sports. “If I can’t bring a guy down, you better believe I’m going to throw my weight on top of him to try to do it. I’m going to take that penalty or fine before I put myself in a position where I’m risking my job.”

Like Woodson, ex-Chargers pass rusher Shawne Merriman also loathes many recent NFL rule changes designed to protect vulnerable quarterbacks and receivers. He worries the NFL is turning into “flag football,” that the league’s efforts to make the game safer and less violent are “teetering on the line of turning the hardcore fan away.”

And yet Merriman feels differently about a potential ban on hip-drop tackles than he does the NFL’s crackdown on defensive tackles driving quarterbacks into the turf or on safeties lighting up receivers as they try to make a catch. Those other hits, Merriman says, are part of the game. Hip-drop tackles, Merriman argues, are not only “very unsafe” but also “very avoidable.”

“As a defender, you have other options,” said Merriman, who spoke to Yahoo Sports to promote the “Lights Out Xtreme Fighting” event in Long Beach, California, on Nov. 18. “Most of the time, if you’re out-leveraged, you get beat around the corner and a guy gets past you, you can try a shoe-string tackle or tackle his legs. There’s no need to bring him down by the waist and drop all your weight on his legs, bending him backward. There’s a way to avoid that.”

The NFL isn’t the first league to consider eradicating the hip-drop tackle. For the past few years, the Australia-based National Rugby League has cautioned players against using it.

Amid widespread confusion over what a hip-drop tackle actually was, NRL executive Graham Annesley in May 2022 released a lengthy video showing examples from previous seasons. Annesley said that referees and review officials look for defenders who grab an opponent at the waist, swivel their nearest hip away from that player’s body and then land their body weight on that player’s exposed lower leg, trapping it in a dangerous position.

The NFL first publicly acknowledged its growing concern with the hip-drop tackle last February in the wake of a pair of high-profile injuries.

Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes limped off the field in the divisional round of last year’s playoffs after Jacksonville Jaguars defensive lineman Arden Key dragged him down and landed on his ankle. Only a day later, Dallas Cowboys running back Tony Pollard suffered a fractured fibula and a high ankle sprain when San Francisco 49ers defensive back Jimmie Ward landed on his leg while making a tackle.

In response to a question about hip-drop tackles at his end-of-season media briefing, NFL chief medical officer Allen Sills acknowledged on Feb. 3 that the league had begun studying the risk posed by “that type of tackle.” Sills added that “it needs to be a very active discussion point again with the competition committee and others” during the offseason.

That warning from Sills spread quickly on social media and drew an unenthusiastic response from many current and former NFL defensive players.

Baltimore Ravens linebacker Patrick Queen quote-tweeted Sills’ comments and quipped, “2 hand touch then.”

Veteran Pittsburgh Steelers defensive tackle Cam Heyward called the potential rule change “so stupid” and wondered, “How the heck are we ever going to get guys on the ground?”

Former All-Pro defensive back Richard Sherman wrote this tackling technique was “just a desperation wrap up trying to prevent a ball carrier from gaining extra yards” and outlawing it “would be overkill.”

In March, the NFL Players Association released a statement calling on the NFL to “reconsider implementing a rule prohibiting the hip-drop tackle.” The statement noted that even the NFL was having a difficult time defining what a hip-drop tackle actually was.

“Any prohibition on the 'hip-drop tackle' technique is unfair to players and unrealistic to implement,” the NFLPA statement said. “It places defensive players in an impossible position by creating indecision in the mind of any tackling player, puts officials in an unreasonable situation that will result in inconsistent calls on the field, and confuses our fans.”

While the NFL made no rule change last offseason, subsequent incidents have again shined a spotlight on this issue. The knee injury that Miami Dolphins rookie running back De’Von Achane suffered against the New York Giants earlier this month appears to have been the result of a Leonard Williams hip-drop tackle. Seattle Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith also briefly had to leave an Oct. 2 game after Giants linebacker Isaiah Simmons dragged him down and landed on his lower right leg.

“We just have to get that out of ball because it’s so dangerous,” Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said afterward. “We’re so lucky that Geno didn’t get wiped out. Because he could’ve easily.”

It appears that Carroll has some powerful allies in the fight to phase out the hip-drop tackling technique. NFL competition committee chairman Rich McKay on Tuesday likened it to the horse-collar tackle because “the runner becomes defenseless.” NFL executive vice president Jeff Miller called the hip-drop tackle “an unforgiving behavior” that results in a substantial injury “more or less every week.”

The challenge, Miller and McKay acknowledged, is defining a hip-drop tackle so that it can be effectively officiated and regulated. That’s a hurdle the competition committee must overcome before any rule change can be enacted.

“You're always going to have the defender come back and say, 'Hey, you're making it harder on us,'" McKay said. “And the answer to that is yes, we are. Because when there's a tactic that's being used, or a technique that's creating an unreasonable risk of injury to a player, it's our job to try to find a way to regulate that.”

For most running backs, that rule change can’t come soon enough. As veteran Mark Ingram wrote in response to Drake’s tweet two years ago, “If the league is serious about 'player safety,' this specific style of tackling needs to be penalized and disciplined!! We see way too many serious injuries from this particular style of using the body weight to pull a runner to the ground!!”

Defensive players often feel differently. Many of them argue that the NFL’s zeal to make the sport safer is alienating fans, altering the fabric of the sport and putting defenders in an unfair position.

“When does it end?” Woodson wonders. “Every year, it gets harder and harder for defenders because the rules are forever changing and they’re always geared toward the offensive side of the ball.”