NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said on Tuesday that the move to ban the swivel hip-drop tackle is a positive step for the league’s player health and safety.
“Listen, it’s a play that has 20 times (the) injury factor,” Goodell said during his news conference at the conclusion of the Annual League Meeting in Orlando, Fla. “From that standpoint, you can’t allow that. We’ve been very effective and very clear when we see a technique that we think is going to increase the safety of our players, particularly at that kind of rate. I’m not sure we’ve had anything at that kind of rate; we’re going to work to try to remove it from the game. I think we’ll be very effective in doing that.”
Even if some worry about the quality of the game by removing one way a defender can take a player to the ground, the support for banning the hip-drop tackle was widespread. The NFL’s Competition Committee and the league’s owners were unanimous in their belief that the play needed to be earmarked for penalty.
While a subset of players — and the NFL Players Association — voiced their concern, Goodell told reporters that all the parties came together to study the effects of the hip-drop tackle before its banishment.
“We met with (the players’ union) and the Competition Committee back in Indianapolis,” Goodell said on Tuesday. “They came in and they expressed their view immediately. We had an opportunity to go through all of the plays from a video standpoint. We had them here from our engineers as well as ask questions of our engineers, and our committee members.”
Now, the league’s officials must get up to speed on the new rules and plan on implementation during games. But Goodell did not believe adding more to referees’ plates would be a problem during the 2024 NFL season.
“I think that we talked a great deal about this. It’s not unusual,” Goodell said. “When we had the lowering of the head (penalty added), and the head-to-head contact, there (was) a transition period. We’re going to make sure that the officials are comfortable that when they see something clear and obvious, they throw the flag.”
And if calls are missed live during games? The league office will have the officials’ backs there, too, Goodell said.
“Otherwise, we will see it on videotape,” he said on Tuesday. “We will see it on tape on Monday, and we’ll deal with fines and discipline. It’s been an effective way to do it, and it will not put all that pressure on the officials alone to get that right.”
