John Harbaugh recently made headlines with his comments about the banning of the hip-drop tackle. Recently the NFL made the very controversial decision to ban the hip drop tackle during this offseason, and many fans freaked out about it as it will continue to give the offense the advantage.
It makes playing defense even harder for NFL players, so there is a lot of concern from fans and even coaches about how this new rule will change the league.
John Harbaugh Happy With Ban
While many fans and ex players even, came out against the new rule change, John Harbaugh thinks that it was time to get rid of that tackle. While the Baltimore Ravens have been known under Harbaugh to be a very hard hitting team, the Super Bowl winning coach thinks that the hip-drop tackle is very dangerous.
While Harbaugh is a defensive minded coach, he does not think this would make it harder on defensive players, and he is happy the league got rid of the tackle as so many players get injured from it each year.
“When you drop down on the back of his legs, it’s a mass,” Harbaugh said at the Ravens’ pre-draft press conference this week.
“It’s 25 times more likely to have a serious injury.”
Mark Andrews Got Injured By Hip-Drop Tackle
This season Mark Andrews, the top tight end for the Baltimore Ravens, got injured on a play in which he was tackled by a hip-drop tackle. Since then, Harbaugh has been a proponent of removing that tackle from the game.
The star tight end had to miss several games due to that injury, and Harbaugh thinks defenses will be fine without that tackle.
“It’s really a bad play, and it needed to be out,” Harbaugh added.
“And guys are going to tackle just fine without the quote-unquote hip-drop tackle, because they tackled just fine without it for 100 years of football before that, when you never saw it, really.”
Harbaugh went on a long tangent about this will not make anything harder for defensive players and that the great defenders like Ray Lewis knew how to wrap up and tackle properly.
“You’ve got to be close enough to that ball carrier to actually get him around the hips, pull him close to yourself, swing your hips through and drop on the back of his legs,” Harbaugh said about tackling and what the proper technique for it should be.
“If you’re that close, wrap him up, tackle him and take him to the ground, like Ray Lewis used to do and everybody did for 100 years before that.”
We will have to wait and see how this rule change will impact the game, but while many players have come out against it, Harbaugh is strongly in support of this major change.