For all of you head football coaches who read this… a major change in how we tackle is on the horizon! If you have Hudl.com, you need to go to your home page on Hudl. On the right side under “recent activity” there are two photo’s of Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks. You are allowed to watch 2 short (7 minutes) videos that Coach Carroll is doing the voice-over on. They are about “Hawk (Seahawks) Tackling Technique.”
I’m starting my 40th year in coaching on Friday. What the video’s show is revolutionary as far as I’m concerned… and very important for this game that we love. The Seahawks, in so many words, are not teaching “across the bow” angle tackling anymore! The idea is to keep the head out of tackling as much as possible.
In the video’s are several clips of rugby teams playing. They are going at it realllllllllllly hard with some serious tackling. And, be aware: they don’t use helmets in rugby!
With the concussion concern continuing to be something that we as coaches have to address, I think this way of tackling has a lot of merit. Interestingly, I called my assistant coaches and asked them to watch the video’s and let me know what they think. My line coach, who is older than I am, said: “That’s the way they taught us to tackle 60 years ago when I played! And, of course, we did not wear face masks!!!” That got me to thinking that maybe it was safer back then because players knew not to stick their head in there or get a mashed nose.
This “Hawk” tackling technique needs to be taken under serious consideration by all of us. We are going to start teaching it as soon as practice starts. You should consider it too.
