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Diaz bringing NEW tackling style?
Comments (73)
Well Diaz's teams are notoriously bad at tackling so....
So brain injury and neck snapped is one in same? Ask Utley if leather helmet would have been worse for him. Can't believe I'm entertaining your response, based on your history. Best helmet in the world don't do **** for the neck stoopid! Now, give me measureables, height and weight on those rugby guys. They look bigger than 115. That bad *** helmet don't protect their neck. Take that helmet off, they will not use head as a weapon...
Most NFL players aren't suffering brain damage and
Most don't use their helmets as a weapon, but keep saying the words weapon and helmet together its almost starting to sound scary.
You act like u know for a fact not wearing helmets is the safer alternative / dumbass why do u think they started wearing helmets in the 1st place ???
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In light of recent studies, saying most NFL players are not suffering from brain damage is highly debatable.
Many ex-NFL players had brain disease linked to concussions - CNN.com
There's gotta be as many rugby players as football players around the world, and they don't get the same kind of neck and head injuries as our football players do. So as stupid as it sounds, this guy might be on to something with his leather helmet thing.
But you have a point too... back in the 30's or whatever dudes used to get cracked skulls from playing football. I'd rather have a concussion than a cracked skull, but of course that's a personal preference and everyone is diffrent.
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Coach Kline in Louisiana taught us to use visualization and tackling fuel.
That's a function of not ever hearing anything about a rugby game.
The problem with removing the helmets is that the head gear is not only used for tackling. Defenders in the front-7 would have to completely change the way they take on/defeat blocks from the Offensive Linemen. The helmet is often the first thing that strikes an approaching blocker. Then the defender rolls his hips, extends his arms and disengaged. Trying to do this without a helmet would lead to all kinds of broken **** on your face. These are issues that Rugby doesn't have to worry about, which is why IMO that sport is a poor example.
The most physical part of football isn't the tackling, it's the blocking. (and defeating of blocks)
The most physical part of football isn't the tackling, it's the blocking. (and defeating of blocks)
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You just stated the real problem. The hard shell helmet is used as a weapon. That's the problem. I don't know what the answer is.
Quite honestly, not a **** thing. That's how I was taught. Target is the waist. Sink your hips and explode through the runner with your shoulder. Head up and in front. Two handed wrap with both hands grabbing jersey. And this is how I taught tackling as well. I did a lot of form and fit drills. The problem is at the high school level and above they don't spend nearly enough time on tackling or for that matter blocking technique. I can't stand the USA Football technique being taught. Yes, the head is up but driving your head into the center of the runners chest doesn't appear safe at game speed. Rarely does a tackler get a clean shot like that.
Just for information, top rugby players are, to steal a line from a car dealer, huggggggggggeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Rugby World Cup 2015: How do the teams breakdown for height, weight, average age and caps? - Telegraph
Rugby World Cup 2015: How do the teams breakdown for height, weight, average age and caps? - Telegraph
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worth a watch for anyone that thinks this "new" tackling style will diminish our physicality.
The good old days of leather helmets when football was more dangerous than facing a firing squad and players died regularly?
Dudes living in dreamland around here. Most head injuries occur when players take stray knees to the head or their head bounces off the ground at the end of a tackle. You'll prevent neither of those with Hawk tackling, but you'd get those guys killed or crippled without a modern safety helmet.
Put a leather helmet on a guy and let his head bounce off Adrian Peterson's knee at full speed. Then watch him turn into a cucumber in a hospital bed
a thorough piece about the impact rugby style tackling is slowly having on American football. Mentions other schools like Michigan State, Florida, and Washington starting to employ rugby techniques. I don't anticipate any changes in football gear, but the way tackling is taught from youth on up may start to change as a result.
What the NFL Can Learn From Rugby - WSJ
(Sorry, had to cut and paste article because link would not allow access without subscription.)
For most Americans, the Rugby World Cup, which kicks off Friday, is a strange curiosity.
Here’s a sport that looks a little like the NFL. But with no helmets, no pads and no forward passes, it is more reminiscent of the earliest days of American football, when the game amounted to little more than mud wrestling over a pig bladder.
Yet despite rugby’s primeval appearance and violent reputation, some of football’s most forward-thinking coaches say it is actually light years ahead when it comes to one of the few skills these sports still have in common: the art of tackling.
“When you talk about tackling with efficiency, tackling with power, what they’re doing is really remarkable,” said Seattle Seahawks assistant coach Rocky Seto.
More on Rugby
5 Things to Know About the Rugby World Cup
.
Thanks to everything from the evolution of spread offenses to new laws limiting contact in practice, American football coaches have spent the past few years wrestling over how to halt the bigger, faster athletes that are popping up across the field.
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The answer, it seems, may be found in rugby, a sport invented in 1823 whose players have spent the better part of two centuries perfecting the craft of bringing down ball-carriers in space. The Seahawks began studying rugby for tips on tackling in 2012 and became so enamored with their effectiveness that coach Pete Carroll subsequently released an instructional video on YouTube urging other coaches to adopt its superior, safer techniques.
It didn’t take long for the idea to spread. Ohio State implemented rugby-style tackling in the build-up to the 2014 college-football season and proceeded to miss fewer tackles than any team in the country on the way to a national title, according to Buckeyes coach Urban Meyer.
The Rugby Tackle
In rugby, tacklers lead with the shoulder, placing the head behind the ball carrier. The contact spot is lower, as tacklers wrap opponents around the thighs, driving their feet on contact to bring runners to a halt. ENLARGE
In rugby, tacklers lead with the shoulder, placing the head behind the ball carrier. The contact spot is lower, as tacklers wrap opponents around the thighs, driving their feet on contact to bring runners to a halt.
.
Rugby techniques have subsequently been introduced at Washington, Florida and Michigan State, whose head coach Mark Dantonio used a coaching clinic in Connecticut earlier this year to extol the benefits of rugby-style tackling. “After watching the tapes, I personally am thinking of going to Australia to get some of those dudes,” Dantonio said. “They knock the stuffing out of people.”
How rugby players have developed into the premier practitioners of tackling has nothing to do with how hard they hit or how gleefully they seem to hurl themselves at opponents. Rather, the dynamics of the game have elevated the tackle into rugby’s most critical element. Though both games involve accumulating territory by running and kicking a ball, rugby differs from football in that there are few stoppages. A series of play can last for several minutes without a pause and every player must play both ways as teams seamlessly switch from offense to defense with no substitutions.
The upshot is that a missed tackle in rugby doesn’t merely surrender a few yards or a first down. It can force a team to “be on defense for another five minutes,” says Rex Norris, director of football at Atavus, a Seattle-based company that works with the Seahawks and Ohio State on rugby-tackling techniques. “Just one missed tackle can transform an entire game.”
While football evolved into a downhill game of pulverizing collisions at the line of scrimmage, laws forbidding the forward pass meant that rugby developed as a game of lateral movement. To find holes in the defense, teams must switch the ball quickly from one side of the field to the other, meaning tackles are rarely delivered head-on. Defenders must corral opponents from every conceivable angle. “It’s a different way of defending,” said Tom Youngs, a member of England’s squad for the upcoming World Cup. “In the NFL, they’re all set up to [tackle] whereas I may be wide or in different positions. We have to be better defenders in space.”
The Football Tackle
In football, tacklers have traditionally been coached to get their head across the body, wrap up high and squeeze the ball carrier. ENLARGE
In football, tacklers have traditionally been coached to get their head across the body, wrap up high and squeeze the ball carrier.
.
They’re also expected to tackle more often. While an average of 89 tackles were made in NFL games last season, top-level rugby games like those in the World Cup produce an average of 221 tackles per game, according to a 2011 study by the British Journal for Sports Medicine.
The importance of tackling means rugby coaches don’t merely devote portions of every training session to tackling drills, says Ireland national team player Dave Kearney. They have also subjected the tackle to the sort of exhaustive analysis that football coaches have spent decades pouring into the passing game. Rugby coaches say the simple act of taking a ball carrier to the ground can be divided into six sub-categories, ranging from a textbook “profile tackle,” in which the defender makes contact with the near pectoral region of the ball carrier, to “smother tackles,” where two players combine to bring down a runner.
What these different tackles have in common is they involve leading with the shoulder, placing your head behind the opponent, wrapping them around the thighs and generally bringing ball carriers to a sudden halt. “In rugby, we break it down into six different types of tackling drills,” said Norris. “I bet you if you asked football coaches how many different types of drills they do for tackling, a lot of them wouldn’t even understand the question.”
As advanced as rugby tackling may be, athletes in both sports agree that no one knows how to deliver a lick quite like an NFL linebacker. But at a time when fears about contact and hits to the head have put football under pressure over its safety record, Ohio State defensive coordinator Chris Ash says shifting from highlight-reel hits to a more technique-focused style of tackling makes sense. “It’s not only a more effective way to tackle, it’s a safer way to tackle,” said Ash, who was instrumental in the Buckeyes’ transition to rugby tackling last year.
It’s hard to proclaim definitively that rugby tackling is safer. The sport has only recently begun researching the long-term effects of head and neck injuries and some studies suggest the risks may even be greater than in football because of the higher number of tackles per game and absence of helmets.
Carlos Hyde of the San Francisco 49ers rushes past Anthony Barr of the Minnesota Vikings on Monday night. ENLARGE
Carlos Hyde of the San Francisco 49ers rushes past Anthony Barr of the Minnesota Vikings on Monday night. Photo: Getty Images
.
But American football coaches say rugby tackling clearly cuts down on the number of dangerous head-to-head collisions. While football players have traditionally been coached to tackle “head across the body, up-high wrap and squeeze,” Ash said, rugby tackling positions the head behind the ball carrier and the contact spot is lower. “So the biggest difference is there are fewer blows to the head,” he said.
The transition from football to rugby tackling isn’t always easy. Even after convincing players to try something different, coaches must confront the practical challenge of figuring out how to train them properly in the art of wrap-up tackling at a time when the sport has curbed the amount of contact allowed in practice.
Through resourceful coaching and some slightly unusual drills, however, it’s possible to reprogram players in the space of a single off-season. Ohio State players spent days practicing on their knees to perfect their approach to the tackle, while Florida has practiced with giant foam rings imported from Australia to improve their tackling techniques and teach correct head position.
“Philosophically, everything they’ve been taught in the game of football and how you tackle, we’re going against that,” said Ash. “But I’m 100% convinced that [rugby tackling] is the way of the future.”
What the NFL Can Learn From Rugby - WSJ
(Sorry, had to cut and paste article because link would not allow access without subscription.)
For most Americans, the Rugby World Cup, which kicks off Friday, is a strange curiosity.
Here’s a sport that looks a little like the NFL. But with no helmets, no pads and no forward passes, it is more reminiscent of the earliest days of American football, when the game amounted to little more than mud wrestling over a pig bladder.
Yet despite rugby’s primeval appearance and violent reputation, some of football’s most forward-thinking coaches say it is actually light years ahead when it comes to one of the few skills these sports still have in common: the art of tackling.
“When you talk about tackling with efficiency, tackling with power, what they’re doing is really remarkable,” said Seattle Seahawks assistant coach Rocky Seto.
More on Rugby
5 Things to Know About the Rugby World Cup
.
Thanks to everything from the evolution of spread offenses to new laws limiting contact in practice, American football coaches have spent the past few years wrestling over how to halt the bigger, faster athletes that are popping up across the field.
Advertisement
The answer, it seems, may be found in rugby, a sport invented in 1823 whose players have spent the better part of two centuries perfecting the craft of bringing down ball-carriers in space. The Seahawks began studying rugby for tips on tackling in 2012 and became so enamored with their effectiveness that coach Pete Carroll subsequently released an instructional video on YouTube urging other coaches to adopt its superior, safer techniques.
It didn’t take long for the idea to spread. Ohio State implemented rugby-style tackling in the build-up to the 2014 college-football season and proceeded to miss fewer tackles than any team in the country on the way to a national title, according to Buckeyes coach Urban Meyer.
The Rugby Tackle
In rugby, tacklers lead with the shoulder, placing the head behind the ball carrier. The contact spot is lower, as tacklers wrap opponents around the thighs, driving their feet on contact to bring runners to a halt. ENLARGE
In rugby, tacklers lead with the shoulder, placing the head behind the ball carrier. The contact spot is lower, as tacklers wrap opponents around the thighs, driving their feet on contact to bring runners to a halt.
.
Rugby techniques have subsequently been introduced at Washington, Florida and Michigan State, whose head coach Mark Dantonio used a coaching clinic in Connecticut earlier this year to extol the benefits of rugby-style tackling. “After watching the tapes, I personally am thinking of going to Australia to get some of those dudes,” Dantonio said. “They knock the stuffing out of people.”
How rugby players have developed into the premier practitioners of tackling has nothing to do with how hard they hit or how gleefully they seem to hurl themselves at opponents. Rather, the dynamics of the game have elevated the tackle into rugby’s most critical element. Though both games involve accumulating territory by running and kicking a ball, rugby differs from football in that there are few stoppages. A series of play can last for several minutes without a pause and every player must play both ways as teams seamlessly switch from offense to defense with no substitutions.
The upshot is that a missed tackle in rugby doesn’t merely surrender a few yards or a first down. It can force a team to “be on defense for another five minutes,” says Rex Norris, director of football at Atavus, a Seattle-based company that works with the Seahawks and Ohio State on rugby-tackling techniques. “Just one missed tackle can transform an entire game.”
While football evolved into a downhill game of pulverizing collisions at the line of scrimmage, laws forbidding the forward pass meant that rugby developed as a game of lateral movement. To find holes in the defense, teams must switch the ball quickly from one side of the field to the other, meaning tackles are rarely delivered head-on. Defenders must corral opponents from every conceivable angle. “It’s a different way of defending,” said Tom Youngs, a member of England’s squad for the upcoming World Cup. “In the NFL, they’re all set up to [tackle] whereas I may be wide or in different positions. We have to be better defenders in space.”
The Football Tackle
In football, tacklers have traditionally been coached to get their head across the body, wrap up high and squeeze the ball carrier. ENLARGE
In football, tacklers have traditionally been coached to get their head across the body, wrap up high and squeeze the ball carrier.
.
They’re also expected to tackle more often. While an average of 89 tackles were made in NFL games last season, top-level rugby games like those in the World Cup produce an average of 221 tackles per game, according to a 2011 study by the British Journal for Sports Medicine.
The importance of tackling means rugby coaches don’t merely devote portions of every training session to tackling drills, says Ireland national team player Dave Kearney. They have also subjected the tackle to the sort of exhaustive analysis that football coaches have spent decades pouring into the passing game. Rugby coaches say the simple act of taking a ball carrier to the ground can be divided into six sub-categories, ranging from a textbook “profile tackle,” in which the defender makes contact with the near pectoral region of the ball carrier, to “smother tackles,” where two players combine to bring down a runner.
What these different tackles have in common is they involve leading with the shoulder, placing your head behind the opponent, wrapping them around the thighs and generally bringing ball carriers to a sudden halt. “In rugby, we break it down into six different types of tackling drills,” said Norris. “I bet you if you asked football coaches how many different types of drills they do for tackling, a lot of them wouldn’t even understand the question.”
As advanced as rugby tackling may be, athletes in both sports agree that no one knows how to deliver a lick quite like an NFL linebacker. But at a time when fears about contact and hits to the head have put football under pressure over its safety record, Ohio State defensive coordinator Chris Ash says shifting from highlight-reel hits to a more technique-focused style of tackling makes sense. “It’s not only a more effective way to tackle, it’s a safer way to tackle,” said Ash, who was instrumental in the Buckeyes’ transition to rugby tackling last year.
It’s hard to proclaim definitively that rugby tackling is safer. The sport has only recently begun researching the long-term effects of head and neck injuries and some studies suggest the risks may even be greater than in football because of the higher number of tackles per game and absence of helmets.
Carlos Hyde of the San Francisco 49ers rushes past Anthony Barr of the Minnesota Vikings on Monday night. ENLARGE
Carlos Hyde of the San Francisco 49ers rushes past Anthony Barr of the Minnesota Vikings on Monday night. Photo: Getty Images
.
But American football coaches say rugby tackling clearly cuts down on the number of dangerous head-to-head collisions. While football players have traditionally been coached to tackle “head across the body, up-high wrap and squeeze,” Ash said, rugby tackling positions the head behind the ball carrier and the contact spot is lower. “So the biggest difference is there are fewer blows to the head,” he said.
The transition from football to rugby tackling isn’t always easy. Even after convincing players to try something different, coaches must confront the practical challenge of figuring out how to train them properly in the art of wrap-up tackling at a time when the sport has curbed the amount of contact allowed in practice.
Through resourceful coaching and some slightly unusual drills, however, it’s possible to reprogram players in the space of a single off-season. Ohio State players spent days practicing on their knees to perfect their approach to the tackle, while Florida has practiced with giant foam rings imported from Australia to improve their tackling techniques and teach correct head position.
“Philosophically, everything they’ve been taught in the game of football and how you tackle, we’re going against that,” said Ash. “But I’m 100% convinced that [rugby tackling] is the way of the future.”
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That's good. Now show us their forty times, verticals, broad jumps, etc.
It's EXPLOSIVENESS that makes the NFL dangerous not size.
I know a rugby player was paralyzed from the neck down not to long ago I think last year if I'm not mistaken.
You take the best athletes from South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, England and you will get elite athleticism and speed comparable to the NFL. Jarryd Hayne ran a 4'5 at his pro day at 6'2 220. Watch the All Blacks. They are no joke specimens.
Rugby is a mans sport. Those guys are animals in their own right.
