“The players oppose any attempt by the NFL to implement a rule prohibiting a ‘swivel hip-drop’ tackle,” the NFLPA said in a statement.
The NFL has proposed a ban on the so-called “hip-drop tackle” that the league says increases the likelihood of injury during a play.
In their new rule proposals for the 2024 season, the NFL has suggested a 15-yard penalty if a player “grabs the runner with both hands or wraps the runner with both arms; and unweights himself by swiveling and dropping his hips and/or lower body, landing on and trapping the runner’s leg(s) at or below the knee.”
The NFL Players Association made it known in a statement Wednesday that they are opposed to the potential new rule.
“The players oppose any attempt by the NFL to implement a rule prohibiting a ‘swivel hip-drop’ tackle,” the NFLPA wrote on its Twitter/X page. “While the NFLPA remains committed to improvements to our game with health and safety in mind, we cannot support a rule change that causes confusion for us as players, for coaches, for officials, and especially, for fans. We call on the NFL, again, to reconsider implementing this rule.”
Former Denver Broncos defensive lineman Shelby Harris also spoke out about the proposed rule:
The NFL’s Competition Committee recommends banning the hip-drop tackle and making it a 15-yard penalty.
Each year, the NFL Competition Committee discusses potential changes to the game. Sometimes things end up working out for the best, while other changes flop, most notably making pass interference reviewable.
This year, the biggest focus is on the hip-drop tackle. The committee has recommended that it be banned and be penalized as a 15-yard personal foul.
A hip-drop tackle is defined by the committee as such:
Grabs the runner with both hands or wraps the runner with both arms; and
Unweights himself by swiveling and dropping his hips and/or lower body, landing on and trapping the runner’s leg(s) at or below the knee.
The reason the NFL wants this out of the game is the injuries suffered during hip-drop tackles last season. One of the more notable ones was Baltimore Ravens tight end Mark Andrews suffering an ankle injury in Week 11 and not playing again until the AFC Championship Game over two months later.
Will this be a successful rule change? It certainly would make playing defense that much harder. However, if it does help eliminate injuries, it won’t be called a failure.
The NCAA announced three rule changes for the 2024 football season on Friday with the addition of a two-minute warning on top of two long-expected tweaks.
Starting this coming season, college teams will have access to in-game footage through tablets on the sidelines and during halftime. Coaches will also be able to communicate directly with players through one-way in-helmet communication systems.
A third change was added in the wave of 2024 revisions, however: college football will add a two-minute warning. The clock will automatically stop for a timeout with two minutes left before halftime and before the end of the game, another common NFL practice.
After meetings this week, college leaders are expected to finalize on Friday recommendations to adopt the long-expected player-to-coach helmet comms system; use of tablets on sideline/halftime; and a 2-minute warning, sources tell @YahooSports.https://t.co/ZRTHFjHZ7f
College football is set to approve three significant rule changes for the 2024 season, according to a report from Yahoo’s Ross Dellenger.
The three changes are expected to come after meetings this week regarding the future of the sport. The news coincides with speculation about the future of the College Football Playoff and the general structure of the sport.
One notable recent change to the game is the elimination of stopping the clock while the chains are reset on first downs. That, plus some of the reported upcoming changes reflects a longer trend of the college game working to be more like the NFL product.
Again, that’s what’s happening again this offseason. Here are the rule changes expected to be approved by college football leaders for the 2024 season:
The 2024 MLB season will start with some rule changes. Here’s what you need to know.
The 2024 MLB season is just under three months away, and we’re getting some new changes for next year.
When the Dodgers and Padres kick off the 2024 season by playing the first-ever MLB games in South Korea (March 20-21), things might look slightly different as the league continues to build upon the changes it made in 2023.
The NBA has two new rules for the upcoming season.
Welcome to Layup Lines, our basketball newsletter where we’ll prep you for the tip-off of tonight’s action, from what to watch to bets to make. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox every afternoon.
Flopping in the NBA has long been the bane of many a fan’s existence, and the league is taking an extra measure this offseason to curb how often it occurs.
One of two rule changes approved for the upcoming season, players whistled for flopping will now be assessed a non-unsportsmanlike technical foul that results in a free throw for the opposing team, the league announced Tuesday.
This will obviously make players think twice before doing their best Denzel Washington on the court, though I didn’t view flopping as a particularly troubling issue for the NBA last season and thought the standard system of fining players was more than enough to disincentivize it from happening. Apparently the numbers didn’t bare that out because the NBA Board of Governors saw fit to move forward with an in-game measure, but this could backfire considering how subjective flops are in real time.
On the bright side, it’s just a one-year trial, and the league can always reverse course if it doesn’t work out.
Now, the other rule change, I’m 100 percent behind. The board also voted to expand the replay system to give coaches a second challenge if their first one is successful, as I think this can have a positive impact right away.
Adding a second challenge should make coaches less hesitant to challenge obvious calls early in games for fear of not having a challenge down the stretch. As a result, we should get cleaner games, which is especially important in the age of high definition broadcasting where everyone watching can see when a call is wrong — and bets can be impacted.
The potential downside of this rule is slower games, but it’ll be worth it to have games go the way they’re supposed to.
The Tip-Off
Some NBA goodness from around the USA TODAY Sports network.
AP Photo/Matthew Hinton
It hasn’t been an easy summer for Zion Williamson professionally. Heck, it’s been a rough year — since he was injured early in 2023 and couldn’t return as his New Orleans Pelicans failed to qualify for the playoffs.
Since then, he’s been at the center of reports about everything from poor relationships with teammates to, um, interesting relationships away from basketball. He’s even been mentioned in trade rumors and recently addressed some of the questions regarding his fitness.
“It was refreshing to see a teammate come out and defend Williamson in this way — especially considering all of the criticism that has come about his relationship with the team.
Sure, Nance goes a little hard here in this response. But you can understand the frustration considering how Williamson has been talked about over the last few months.”
Denver Broncos coach Sean Payton was not necessarily in favor of that rule, in part because it will make it harder to benefit from shorter kickoffs following a penalty.
“There’ll be, strategically, more opportunities where teams who are kicking the ball decide not to kick it high,” Payton said on June 14. “Let’s say there’s a foul on a scoring play, and you have it on the 50-yard line. You kick it in the air, they fair catch it and it’s at the 25. You don’t realize any of the penalty. I was kind of pushing for if that were the case, I would have thought that we would have put the ball on the 10 to realize the 15-yard personal foul, but that’s not the case.”
Payton believes that there could be unintended consequences of this new rule. If teams start kicking the ball low, it could bounce near the sideline, giving a returner an opportunity to field it with a foot out of bounds. That would technically put the ball “out of bounds,” a penalty that spots the ball at the 40-yard line.
“The last thing we’re going to do — unless we’re late in the game — is put it high in the air and start at the 25. Because of that, you’re going to see balls on the ground more. We just did a straddle rule [at practice]. You guys have all seen those balls near the sideline and the returners kind of in that dilemma of is it going out of bounds? If they’ve got a foot that is on the paint of the sideline and then touch the ball in play, it’s out of bounds and it goes to the 40. We call it straddle. I think we’re going to see that situation probably tick up a little bit as a result of the rule change.”
So after the NFL made an effort to reduce kickoffs and spot the ball at the 25-yard line after a fair catch, the result could instead be more teams kicking the ball low — hoping for a return. More low kicks could lead to more kicks going out of bounds and more “straddle” situations, which could mean more drives starting at the 40-yard line instead of the 25-yard line.
Unless kickers can avoid the sidelines, coaches might lobby for the NFL’s new fair catch rule to be one-and-done after the 2023 season.
The NFL will have several new rules for the 2023 season. Here is the complete list.
The NFL will have several new rules for the 2023 NFL season, including allowing select players to wear jersey No. 0 and allowing teams to carry an emergency third quarterback without using a game-day roster spot for that QB.
Those are among the changes that fans will notice the most this year, but they certainly aren’t the only changes. Here is the complete list of the NFL’s rule changes for the 2023 season.
At the NFL’s Spring League Meeting in Minnesota on Monday, commissioner Roger Goodell did not have the necessary 24 votes to adopt a rule change for kickoffs beginning with the 2023 season.
By Tuesday, several times flipped their vote and the rule change passed on a one-year trial period. This season, a team that fair catches a kickoff will be given the ball at their own 25-yard line instead of where the ball is caught.
To get enough support for that rule change, Goodell had to flip the votes of several team owners, including Denver Broncos co-owner/CEO Greg Penner, according to The MMQB’s Albert Breer.
I'm told there were 12-14 no's in that room Monday. As we wrote last week, Bill Belichick, John Harbaugh and Dan Campbell supported the ST coaches' efforts, so no surprise their owners had their backs. Sean Payton was another who backed the STCs—Denver was one Goodell flipped.
It’s unclear how Goodell got Penner to change his votes, but one can only speculate that the Broncos owner used his leverage as bargaining power. Owners can trade votes for concessions or other areas, and perhaps — just wildly speculating — a future draft in Denver was part of the talks.
The Broncos will also want to host a future Super Bowl if they build a new super stadium in the coming years. Maybe the draft and Super Bowl had nothing to do with it, maybe it did.
We might never know how, but Goodell has gotten Denver’s ownership to flip votes twice this offseason.
Introducing take fouls, coach’s challenges and bench decorum to the W
The WNBA has never been afraid to shake things up as a league. It’s always looking to tinker around with things. That’s how we ended up with a mid-season tournament in the W.
Now, the league is tinkering again. This time it’s introducing some rule changes that should work wonders for the pace of play.
Three new concepts are being introduced in the W for when the season tips off in a couple weeks on May 19. The league will include transition take foul penalties, coach challenges and bench decorum rules, per a release from the league.
The NBA has introduced the same rules in recent years and it’s done the league a lot of good. We’ve seen better flow in games and kept the excitement going with transition basketball.
Similar benefits will come to the WNBA.
.@WNBA Key rule changes for ‘23: – Bench conduct: players not in the game may not remain standing at or away from their team’s bench during the game for a prolonged period &, along w/coaches, are prohibited from attempting to distract their opponents in an unsportsmanlike manner.
