Among the rules changes approved at the annual NFL owners meeting in Orlando, Florida, this week was one banning the hip-drop tackle, starting in the 2024 regular season.

What is a hip-drop tackle? It’s when a defender uses his body weight to sort of twist a ball-carrier to the ground from the side.

It’s hard to describe, but a good example of its use was when Bengals linebacker Logan Wilson injured Ravens tight end Mark Andrews using the tackle in a game at M&T Bank Stadium last November.   

Andrews suffered a fractured fibula on the play and missed the rest of the 2023 regular season. Many have said that the Andrews injury was the catalyst for this rule change, but Jeff Miller, the NFL’s vice president of communications and the lead for Health and Safety Initiatives, was talking about trying to rid the sport of this type of tackle even before Andrews suffered his ailment at the hands of Logan. “It is an unforgiving behavior and one that we need to try to define and get out of the game,” said Miller last October in a quote courtesy of the Associated Press. “To quantify it for you, we see an injury more or less every week during the regular season on the hip-drop.”

I get that the league is trying its damndest to make football safer, but this is just another rule that’s going to make it harder for defenders to do their jobs. Yes, I realize how tackling works; you see what you hit, wrap with your arms and drive the ball-carrier to the ground. But that’s a lot easier to do when your target is right in front of you. What about when he’s running away from you, and on an angle, like Andrews was when Wilson was chasing him? A defender can’t just wrap up and drive a player to the ground in that case. No, he has to get a bit creative and bring him down without being dragged for five or 10 yards.

Andrews is a big, athletic tight end, after all.

You add this rule to the elimination of the horse-collar tackle, and that’s one less creative way defenders will now have to bring big, athletic and fast ball-carriers to the ground. You certainly can’t dive at their knees. OK, I suppose you can, but only from behind, and you can’t use your body weight to twist them to the turf. A defender also isn’t allowed to hit a player in the head, especially a quarterback.  But even if a defender uses perfect tackling form to sack a quarterback, he better not land on him with all of his body weight. Otherwise, that’s roughing the passer.

Just so much for a defender to think about in a split second. And isn’t that really the problem here? The NFL is asking its defenders to be sound tacklers when a 200-plus pound ball-carrier is running toward them or away from them at a high-rate of speed. Maybe that ball-carrier decides to lower his helmet at the last second, right when the defender is about to use a perfect tackling technique. Maybe that ball-carrier decides to stiff-arm the defender right in the face as he’s trying to wrap up and make a tackle. What if the stiff-arm leads to the defender using the hip-drop tackle without even realizing it, out of pure instinct?

As per Miller, who discussed the rule change at the owners’ meeting on Monday, the hip-drop tackle was used 230 times during the 2023 regular season and resulted in 15 injuries.

Maybe even 15 injuries are too many, and if the league can find a way to prevent just one, that could be enough to alter the postseason trajectory of a team. Also, considering there are a combined 272 games during the regular season and approximately 33,000 plays (I did the math), will this new rule have that much of an impact in 2024 and beyond?

Just ask the team whose year is ruined by the implementation of this rule in a critical game, especially if it’s a questionable penalty.

And isn’t that another problem? The hip-drop tackle isn’t a black-and-white rule. No, it’s going to be totally subjective. A subjective rule in a sport played by huge men running at breakneck speed and crashing into one another at weird angles?

What could go wrong?

It would be one thing if the rule were open to instant replay, but unless I’m missing something, it is not. Nope, once that flag hits the ground, a defender and his team will be penalized 15 yards. In other words, fans need to prepare themselves for the unexpected. Yep, there might be a point during the 2024 regular season when your favorite team makes a huge stop on fourth down late in a game, but a vague enforcement of this new rule will rear its ugly head and give the opponent a fresh set of downs 15 yards closer to paydirt.

Since the hip-drop tackle is subjective, why not give everyone one season to work out the kinks? Why not just fine the players during the 2024 campaign and then start including 15-yard penalties the following season? It would give officials one year to figure this new rule out and give defenders, people who may actually hate being fined more than they hate 15-yard penalties, a season to rid this particular tackling technique from their arsenal.

We shall see how it all unfolds, but I’m certainly going to prepare myself for the worst.

You should, too.