A discussion of the hit on Matt Moore yesterday, as compared with Michael Floyd's hit on Lippett, turned into an interesting back-and-forth on the necessity of the way tackles are done in today's NFL. I'll pick it up from here:
For every hit where a defender running full speed hits a ball carrier square-on, it would be just as effective a tackle if he planted his shoulder on the carrier's hip, wrapped his arms around the guy's legs, and drove through him from there. It gets the same amount of momentum transfer to try and stop forward progress, with noggins being involved. I rather doubt any additional people are getting "Dragged 4 yards" before completing a tackle.
Pete Carroll disagrees. In fact, he has been a strong advocate for the following system across both college and the NFL:This argument always bugs me.
NFL tackles are different than Rugby tackles because keeping a player from moving forward is almost (if not as) important as getting him to the ground. A guy dragging you 4 yards in rugby before going down isn't a big deal, in football it gives the other team another 4 downs. NFL players tackle the way they do because it's the optimal balance between stopping a player from gaining more yardage, and ending the play by downing him. Forcing rugby style tackling would fundamentally alter the way the game is played, and probably require increasing the yardage requirement from 10 to 15-20 yards.
If that's the only way to make the sport safer, that's fine, but the argument that they should just "tackle better" is ridiculous. Wrap-up style tackling is only the optimal strategy when the player has already past the first down marker.
For every hit where a defender running full speed hits a ball carrier square-on, it would be just as effective a tackle if he planted his shoulder on the carrier's hip, wrapped his arms around the guy's legs, and drove through him from there. It gets the same amount of momentum transfer to try and stop forward progress, with noggins being involved. I rather doubt any additional people are getting "Dragged 4 yards" before completing a tackle.