The 2024 season marks many massive rule changes to the National Football League.
The rule that has gotten the most attention is the new kickoff adjustment, meant to promote more returns and prevent injury by having players on both teams align closer together.
The other major rule is the ban on the hip-drop tackle, which is defined by the NFL as “when a defender wraps up a ball carrier and rotates or swivels his hips, unweighting himself and dropping onto the ball carrier’s legs during the tackle.”
If a player is caught executing a hip-drop tackle by grabbing the runner with both hands, wrapping the runner with both arms, or unweighting himself by swiveling and dropping their hips, it will result in a 15-yard penalty and an automatic first down.
While this has caused many accusations of the NFL Competition Committee of softening the game, multiple figures have come out in support of the change.
This includes Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay, who is also a member of the competition committee. According to Cameron DaSilva of RamsWire, McVay shared how comfortable he is with the new rule with the press this past Thursday.
“Oh, I’m comfortable,” McVay said. “Being involved in a lot of the conversations, I think the intent is to remove a tackle that leads to a more significant amount of injuries. You can see, it’s when you are stopping a guy’s momentum, you’re unweighting on the back of his legs. Those are obvious.”
“Now, there are certain positions that defensive players get in where it’s [the] last line of defense and you’re trying to be able to get a guy down by all means. Those aren’t the ones that they want to officiate.”
“You can see if we all just watched it and you said ‘OK, is this the type of tackle that we want in our game?’ Those are the ones that they’re going to officiate to try to get out because there’s a significant uptick in injuries on those types of tackles when the league studied it. There’s a reason why it was 32-0 in terms of the voting when we were at the league meetings on that.”
This may seem like a massive nerf to the game of football, but it genuinely looks like this is trying to catch the more drastic versions of this tackle. In the end, the goal is to protect players so they can remain safe and hopefully spend more time playing the game that they love.
This is also a rule that can be altered or done away with in 2025 if the results of the ban do not live up to the expectations of what the rules committe thinks it will solve. Either way, the hip-drop tackle has been eliminated.
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