The NFL is considering eliminating the hip-drop tackle.
NFL executive Jeff Miller cited the danger of the play Tuesday at the league meetings, saying the hip-drop tackle increases risk of injury by 25 times the rate of a standard tackle.
“It is an unforgiving behavior and one that we need to try to define and get out of the game,” Miller said, via Rob Maadi of the Associated Press. “To quantify it for you, we see an injury more or less every week in the regular season on the hip-drop.”
The tackle came into the spotlight in the 2022 postseason when Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and Cowboys running back Tony Pollard were injured by hip-drop tackles. Mahomes injured an ankle on a hip-drop tackle by Jaguars defensive lineman Arden Key, and Pollard’s season ended with a fractured fibula and ligament damage in his ankle on a hip-drop tackle by 49ers defensive back Jimmie Ward.
Despite talk about a possible move to ban the tackle because of the injuries it causes — something the National Rugby League in Australia did — neither the Competition Committee nor any team offered a proposal regarding the tackle in the offseason. The league ultimately decided the tackle is hard to define clearly and enforce consistently.
But Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith briefly left a game against the Giants in Week 4 after injuring his knee on a hip-drop tackle by Isaiah Simmons that infuriated Smith.
The NFL banned the horse-collar tackle in 2005 after a series of injuries in 2004, and Rich McKay, the chairman of the NFL’s Competition Committee, called the hip-drop tackle a “cousin” of the horse collar.
“What’s happening on the hip-drop is the defender is encircling tackling the runner and then swinging their weight and falling on the side of their leg, which is their ankle or their knee,” McKay said. “When they use that tactic, you can see why they do, because it can be a smaller man against a bigger man and they’re trying to get that person down because that’s the object of the game. But when they do it, the runner becomes defenseless. They can’t kick their way out from under. And that’s the problem. That’s where the injury occurs. You see the ankle get trapped underneath the weight of the defender.”
The league will continue studying the hip-drop tackle, which McKay said is “creating an unreasonable risk of injury.”
“It’s our job to try to find a way to regulate that,” McKay said.
