Buccaneers’ Todd Bowles and Jason Licht Talk New Hip Drop Tackle Ban

The National Football League is constantly evolving. As such, teams need to get ready for new rule changes, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are no exception — and this year, there’s one that’s quite controversial.

The NFL met for the first of their many annual league meetings at the beginning of the week in Orlando, and the league decided to ban what they call a “hip drop tackle”. The tackle itself has been seen to be quite dangerous in the amount of injuries caused, but the ruling has met opposition from players and fans who believe those injuries are just a part of the game and that defense is being unfairly treated by the competition committee.

A hip drop tackle is defined by the league as any tackle that involves grabbing a ballcarrier with both hands and (not or) “unweights himself” by swiveling and dropping his hips and then landing on the ballcarrier at or below the knee. It’s designed to prevent players from putting their bodyweight where knee and ankle injuries could be common, and it would look like this:

Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles and general manager Jason Licht were both asked about their thoughts on the hip drop tackle. Despite being a defensive head coach, Bowles seems confident that it won’t be a problem for the Bucs because they’ve never taught it — that being said, he couldn’t help but gripe a little bit about another penalty going against the defense.

“It’s great that the league is trying to evolve every year to make the game better, make the game safer,” Bowles said. “It seems like the rules are going against the defense all the time, but you figure it out. And if you don’t teach it or coach it that way, you don’t worry about it.”

Licht emphasized similar beats to Bowles. His focus is where the growth of the game is going, and he believes that if the game is made safer, it will encourage the growth of it in younger generations across all levels of football.

“We’re not trying to take away the standard tackle by any means,” Licht told media Tuesday. “The interest in football is rising at the youth level, and we want to keep it that way. We want to protect the game.”

Either way, the Bucs will have to get used to the new rules like everyone else. The NFL season is set to kick off in the fall, and preseason could be a good indicator of how the rule will be called going forward.

Stick with BucsGameday for more coverage of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers throughout the 2024 offseason.

Follow BucsGameday on Twitter and Facebook.