[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Paulie Walnuts

The hip drop tackle is a 15 yard penalty now as well.

This feels like a joke.

Kinda makes sense when you look at the numbers.

https://sports.yahoo.com/why-is-nfl-...215134053.html

The hip-drop tackle, league executives began saying last year, inflicted injury at 25 times the rate of the average tackle.

And this wasn’t just any injury, the league’s health and safety committee said. This was a time-loss injury.

Fifteen times last season — nearly once a week in a sport where each team plays 17 regular-season games — a player was tackled via what the league is now calling a “swivel” hip-drop tackle, and that player missed game time due to the tackle.

Perhaps as concerning for the committee: The 230 examples of this move that they found on 2023 tape represented a 60% increase from the previous season’s frequency.

“This isn’t an elimination of hip drop,” competition committee chairman Rich McKay said in a Monday afternoon news conference. “This is elimination of a swivel technique that doesn't get used very often and when it is used, it is incredibly injurious to the runner. The runner is purely defenseless.

“Yes, we outlawed the hip drop. But what you may think [of], the drag from behind when he falls, that’s still a [legal] tackle. This is only that tackle where the player is lifting himself in the air and then falling on the legs.”