NEWSLETTER
Despite heavy opposition from the NFLPA, NFL owners voted unanimously to ban the “hip-drop tackle” on Monday during the league’s Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida.
The move to eliminate the controversial play, which is described as when the defender “grabs the runner with both hands or wraps the runner with both arms; and unweights himself by swiveling and dropping his hips and/or lower body, landing on and trapping the runner’s leg(s) at or below the knee,” had unanimous support from the league’s Competition Committee.
The ban, titled 2024 Playing Rule Proposal No. 8 during today’s vote, adds new language to Rule 12, Section 2, adding a new article 18 to the tackling rule.
Article 18. Hip-Drop Tackle. It is a foul if a player uses the following technique to bring a runner to the ground:
(a) grabs the runner with both hands or wraps the runner with both arms; and
(b) unweights himself by swiveling and dropping his hips and/or lower body, landing on and trapping the runner’s leg(s) at or below the knee.
The penalty for the newly approved foul will be 15 yards and an automatic first down for the offense.
In February, NFLPA leaders strongly opposed banning the hip-drop tackle, or any tackle, from the game
During a session with the media at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas, they said that giving officials the discretion to make that call would fundamentally change how defensive players play football and leave too much to interpret for officials.
“I don’t understand how you can police it the right way and allow us to do our job,” Calais Campbell said. “At the end of the day, it’s like, how do you tackle a guy?”
But it wasn’t just defensive players who opposed the move. Austin Ekeler spoke about the issues that could arise from the rule change:
“I think [banning the hip-drop tackle] really compromises the game on multiple levels,” Ekeler said. “One is the officials; it provides another grey area call for the officials to decide ‘was that a hit was that not, now it’s a 15-yard penalty,’ maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. And the fines associated with that is the other thing that we’re trying to combat and trying to get right, and how to make that system better.
“And another thing, just going through scenarios: you’re on the goal line and you’re trying to pull someone back out of the goal line, now you land on their legs, or whatever the case is where it’s considered a hip-drop tackle, you’re not allowed to do that action anymore, so we just allow them to score I guess. There are multiple levels where I think that it compromises the quality of play. It’s ridiculous to me that this is something that [the league] is really putting on the table.”
For more on the NFLPA’s stance on the rule change, read my story from last month’s Super Bowl.
The league approved two additional rule changes along with the ban on the hip-drop tackle
Other rules that passed included the Lions’ proposal to protect a club’s ability to challenge a third ruling following one successful challenge and the committee’s proposal to allow for an enforcement of a major foul by the offense before a change of possession in a situation where both teams have committed fouls.
