According to reports, the NFL owners have voted to make lowering the head in the act of a tackle illegal. This is going to make for some frustrating football Ravens fans:
The National Football League is concerned about concussions, or more accurately the league is worried about the ramifications of concussions to their bottom line. The NFL owners essentially voted to make playing defense next to impossible. That’s because this new rule, could probably be called on just about any play.
New NFL rule: “It is a foul if a player lowers his head to imitate and make contact with his helmet against an opponent.” Player “may” be disqualified. Not targeting, per se, but strengthening of rule on hits with helmet.
— Kevin Seifert (@SeifertESPN) March 27, 2018
The best way to prevent concussions isn’t through making a rule like this. The best way to make football safer is to encourage good tackling technique. The NFL’s defenseless receiver push intended to take the high hits, near the head, out of the game. Taking the head out of harms way is always a good idea, so most people got on board with this. This new rule is going a bit far.
The best way to tackle is low and through the ball carrier. It’s almost as if the NFL owners forgot that the head is in front of the shoulders no matter what. If you lower your shoulders, you lower your head. You want the player’s shoulders doing the hitting, however you want the head low. The biggest key for safety is that the tackling player’s face is pointing to his target and not the grass. Looking down can cause neck and spinal injuries on top of concussions.
The ejection part is concerning. It’s the College Football targeting rule, it’s just worse because it’s less practical.
The Bottom Line:
On a day where NFL fans should be rejoicing about the catch rule being fixed (or at least cleared up) the idea of this rule is concerning. I don’t think anyone questions the intent of the rule. You never want to see things like what happened to Ryan Shazier. Concussions and head injuries aren’t something that can be ignored by the NFL.
Next: Baltimore Ravens: 3 stats they must improve on
The problem is this isn’t going to fix anything and it makes defense harder. It takes the NFL down a road they don’t want to be on. Bad tackling is almost mandated by the rules and this new way to get penalized is going to rear it’s head in some controversial calls.