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Eagles safety not a big fan of NFL’s decision to remove hip-drop tackle originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia
One of the biggest bits of news to come out of the NFL’s annual meetings last week was the decision to outlaw the swivel hip-drop tackle from the game.
Eagles safety Reed Blankenship, who recently signed a one-year extension through the 2025 season, was asked about the new NFL rule on Tuesday. And the Eagles’ leading tackler from the 2023 season is not a fan.
“I’m not gonna change the way I tackle,” Blankenship said. “It’s just one of those things, it just happens. I don’t know, personally, I don’t know what they kinda want us to do in this situation. At some point you’re going to have to bring the guy down eventually so you just kind of do whatever you can. It’s not (that) we’re doing it on purpose, we’re not meaning to injure anybody.
“But you want to play the game to the how it was made. You know you want to be physical and violent and, like I said, you got to bring them down any way possible and sometimes it takes things like that, but it’s going to be tough. I feel like there’s going to be a lot more flags thrown and fines given out than there should. That’s just my personal opinion. But I get it, they’re trying to make the game more safe, but it’s kind of hard when it’s a violent sport to begin with.”
The NFL classifies the new outlawed tackle 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.”
The league says it analyzed over 20,000 tackles over the past two seasons and claims this type of tackle caused lower extremity injuries at a rate 20 times higher than other tackles.
Hip drop tackles are an unacceptable risk to player health and safety.
More than 20K tackles were reviewed from the past two seasons to identify the type of play this rule addresses, below are examples ⬇️🎥 pic.twitter.com/ihEwWbR516
— NFL Football…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/eagles-safety-not-big-fan-175956650.html
Author : NBC Sports Philadelphia
Publish date : 2024-04-02 17:59:56
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