🏈 Does hurdling need to be a penalty?

[sean]

it seems, to me, that runners hurdling a defender has become more and more frequent the past couple/few seasons.; i just watched an osu player try to hurdle a penn st player and not be very successful at it. in fact, the osu player landed on his head.

is it gonna take a player getting severely injured, like a neck broken and the player paralyzed, for them to make this a penalty?

i saw a replay where i runner was going to hurdle the defender as he was going into the endzone and he basically climbed the guy to go over him. like his foot was placed on the guys shoulder. what happens when they miss and their foot goes through the facemask and makes contact with defender's actual face?

i'm all for the players playing hard and trying to get extra yardage and making big plays, but not at the expense of another player, not matter who the teams are.

they've already banned (to a point) the act of a runner flipping into the end zone at the end of a big run to score a touchdown. and that came about due to a player getting injured.


maybe i'm just getting too old....

 

[rick4bama]

@sk33tr I'm with you on this someone is going to get bad hurt, before these guy, stop them from doing it.

 

[EasyTider]

What about diving over the top like Bo last weekend or a receiver jumping 2-3' up to try and catch ball?

 

[50+yeartidefan]

I vote NO....
Maybe just need to play flag football...
But I would vote to start flagging announcers that are butt stupid....

 

[sean]

What about diving over the top like Bo last weekend or a receiver jumping 2-3' up to try and catch ball?

diving into the end zone or for a first down is different, in my opinion. your feet are not going to be going towards or have the chance to come down on anyone or have a chance to move directly towards someone's face or head. but trying to hurdle over another player means your feet, and cleats, can be put on a direct path towards another player's face or facemask. if their foot got caught in the defender's facemask and they tried to bring their foot down with that amount of force, it could be way worse than grabbing a player's facemask. you could take them to the ground by the head and slam their head into the ground with the force of the downward momentum. or what if their cleat got caught in the defender's jersey? the same thing could happen. and both of these could lead to the ball carrier also getting hurt; like a broken leg or a broken ankle.

violent collisions was the main reason they moved the kickoff yard line up. it was to make it easier to have a touchback so there would be fewer times a player could come out of the endzone with the ball and run into a defender coming down the field at full speed.


and yes, i realize this is getting into the whole "that's why it's called football and not ballet" thing. but to have them just go out and play however they want is stupid. there are rules for a reason and some of those are for safety. if it's gonna be that kind of mentality, then we might as well get rid of the horse-collar rule, the facemask rule, the targeting rule, the clipping rule, the roughing the passer/kicker rule, and the cut block rule. let's get rid of anything that has to do with safety and just keep the ones that deal with motion infractions. or we could just go back to playing without pads and see how long any of these players last.

 

[JoshB]

How bout we just get rid of the tackle all-together? Good lord, man.

 

[EasyTider]

How bout we just get rid of the tackle all-together? Good lord, man.

That was kind of where I was going. Not a fan of the hurdle but don't think it's any more dangerous than other big hits.

 

[Bamabww]

I vote no.

 

[JoshB]

That was kind of where I was going. Not a fan of the hurdle but don't think it's any more dangerous than other big hits.

Anytime you give yourself up like that its going to have risks but I mean it is what it is. Saying we should ban a player from doing it, might as well just say lets ban them from hitting in general.

 

[TerryP]

How bout we just get rid of the tackle all-together? Good lord, man.

@sk33tr Voiced a thought backed up by his reasons. It was one hell of an opportunity to NOT leave a sardonic answer. Just sayin' ...

Two thoughts on this.

One: We have talked over the last four years (as have 1000's) about Reuben Foster's tackling technique and how leading with his helmet could easily lead to career ending injuries. It boiled down to one thing--poor teaching of tacking fundamentals.

Now, but that in context of this. When you see these defensive players get hurdled how often to you see them with their heads up, eyes focused on the breastplate, and moving through the defender? Hardly at all, if any.

With Foster we didn't have as many conversations or worries about him later on in his career because his technique improved. IF, IF these kids we're talking about were tackling properly we wouldn't be seeing all of these hurdles (and likely wouldn't think about injuries resulting from hurdling.)

Two: And this is the most important of all, IMO. If it's a penalty it's also another judgment call we're adding to the current group(s) of officials. I don't think any of us want more judgment calls...but, that being said, lets assume it's passed as a new rule.

How do these refs define what is a hurdle? If a defender is trying to tackle a runner low (as in around his knees) and he jumps over the outstretched tackler...is that a hurdle? Are we going to make it "he can't jump higher than the waist?" OK, which players' waist height?

As a counter point to my own thoughts here:

There's a reason the no leaping rule is growing/expanding since its inception. They are worried about players landing on each other (not necessarily getting hurt when they land.)

 

[jdpas29]

I say make it a penalty if you try a hurdle and fail. Otherwise, a successful hurdle yields 5 extra yards tacked on the end of the run. LEVEL UP!!

 

[sean]

the "hurdling" plays to which i was referring are the ones where they try to jump over a defender that is standing; albeit in a defensive posture. the one that i saw that brought this to my mind was a player who was running with the ball and he met a defender at the goal line. he then went to hurdle the defender and he put his foot on the defender's shoulder to get leverage to get over him and into the end zone. he could have just as easily missed the shoulder and put his foot into the face mask and caused serious damage.

i realize it's one of those things like targeting where they'd have to go back and review it to see if it was indeed a violation. and yes, sometimes the refs get the call wrong and a player gets ejected because of the officials wanting to err on the side of caution. but in my opinion they get the "call" wrong when they don't make the call at all. Alabama has gotten away with some plays that should have been targeting but were never called.

also, i know it's one of those things that can cause a heated debate both for and against. i just wish they'd start to at least take a look at it. if nothing else at least crunch some numbers and see if its become more of a thing in the past couple seasons and happening more and more or if i'm just thinking it is but it's not really happening all that much.

 

[rick4bama]

Well the NFL is nothing but tag football now.