No one personified the “Jacked Up” era of professional football quite like Shawne Merriman.
The former San Diego Chargers pass rusher’s nickname is Lights Out, for goodness sake.
But Merriman isn’t among the many current and former players ripping the NFL for its decision to ban the so-called hip-drop tackle.
Shawne Merriman Weighs In on Hip-Drop Tackle Ban
“I know it’s weird coming from somebody with a nickname like Lights Out, but let me explain how I view this,” Merriman told PFN this week.
“The hip-drop tackle is one of the worst tackles in football, and I’ll tell you why: the runner is completely defenseless. He cannot fold, he can’t go down, he can’t stop you and you’re, you’re putting all your body weight straight down on the back of someone’s leg.
“So there’s a 90-plus percent chance that something’s gonna happen. It may not be a major injury all the time, but an injury is going to happen.”
That was the argument from the league in the lead-up to last week’s vote to make the technique subject to a 15-yard penalty and a fine.
“A hip-drop tackle occurs when a defender wraps up a ball carrier and rotates or swivels his hips, unweighting himself and dropping onto [the] ball carrier’s legs during the tackle,” the NFL explained.
“The NFL analyzed more than 20,000 tackles over the past two seasons and determined that this specific technique causes lower extremity injuries at a rate 20 times higher than other tackles, resulting in an unacceptable risk to player health and safety.”
The ban was opposed in advance by the NFLPA and ripped by current and former players once instituted.
While Merriman believes critics are misguided, he gets where they’re coming from.
“I feel bad for the defensive players, but the problem why a lot of these guys have an issue with this new rule is because there’s so many other rules that don’t make sense,” Merriman said.
“There’s so many other ones, you can’t hit a quarterback below the shoulder pads. You can’t get them below the knee. If there wasn’t so many other rules, I think everybody will sit back and say, ‘Yeah, you know what? Let’s take this out because guess what? This tackle only happens maybe one or two times a game, right? This is not like a recurring thing that’s gonna happen 10 plus time. This is one or two times. But guess what, those one or two times, guys are getting injured.’
“I can’t sit there and say that I would be happy as a defensive player with all the other rules, but I honestly feel like they got this one, this particular one, right.”
KEEP READING: NFL Players Sound Off on Hip-Drop Tackle Being Banned