The NFL this week announced a ban on what it calls the "hip-drop tackle" despite fervent objections from the league's players association.
On Monday the NFL Competition Committee announced that it had passed three new rule changes for the 2024 season, but the most impactful (and hardest to identify and enforce) will be the "swivel hip-drop" tackling technique, which involves a a defender grabbing the ball carrier with both arms, going weightless and then falling and swiveling in such a way as to bring the player to the ground and land on their legs.
In a statement posted to X, the NFLPA said that its player members "oppose any attempt by the NFL to implement a rule prohibiting a 'swivel hip-drop' tackle," saying it cannot "cannot support a rule change that causes confusion for us as players, for coaches, for officials and especially, for fans."
Players, both current and former, have been vocal about their criticism of the new role.
J.J. Watt posted to Twitter, "Just fast forward to the belts with flags on them..." While Miami Dolphins safety Jevon Holland tweeted, "Breaking News: Tackling Banned."
Our statement on the swivel hip-drop tackle. pic.twitter.com/8mzhjtPgKu
— NFLPA (@NFLPA) March 20, 2024
“It doesn’t get used very often, but when it is used, it’s incredibly injurious to the runner,” NFL Competition Committee chairman Rich McKay said, according to the Associated Press. “The runner is purely defenseless. And I have heard defenders say it before, and I hear them, ‘Hey, you’re putting me in a really tough spot. You’re saying I can’t hit here. What do I do?’ And my response has always been, ‘Well, you can’t do that, and that’s just because the guy you’re hitting is defenseless and has no way to protect himself.’ So we’ve got to protect him and you’ve got to come up with other ways, and you know what, they do.”
"As gatekeepers of the game, this is something that we have to remove," Troy Vincent, the NFL's executive vice president of football operations said during a conference call with reporters, according to ESPN.
According to competition committee chairman Rich McKay, the proposed rule was written to address only a subset of the rugby tackling style that has spread around the NFL in recent years. It calls for a 15-yard penalty if a 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."
