The hit that led to star Minnesota Vikings tight end T.J. Hockenson's torn ACL was not pretty. And, naturally, the style of the hit led to a pretty vigorous debate centered around whether or not it was a legal/clean tackle.
Hockenson spoke on the matter Monday and voiced his support for Detroit Lion safety Kerby Joseph, the guy making the above tackle and a previous teammate when the former played in Motown.
Instead, he pointed at the NFL's tackling rules as the catalyst behind the problem. If Joseph remained upright, there is a very good chance he gets hit with a 15-yard penalty for going high. Therefore, it put him in a spot where going low -where there aren't any rules protecting the lower body- made the most sense.
And that, per Hockenson, is the issue.
"I definitely don't think I have it against the player as much as the league putting the defense in those positions in order to have to do that," Hockenson told reporters. "... When you have a guy 25 yards downfield looking back at the ball, trying to make a play, and then you have another guy not even staring at the defender and just kind of putting his helmet down at the knee - you see what happens with that.
"It doesn't put the offensive player in a good position, and it doesn't put the defensive player in a good position. I mean, his helmet's straight down, looking at the ground... that's not a good football tackle. That's not a good football position. That's not necessarily, again, my job to look at that - I'll leave that to the league."
He's absolutely correct, too. The league has been trying to cut down on concussions as much as possible ever since CTE was discovered, which is why Joseph felt like he had to go low. The unintended consequence of the NFL's rules, however, has left players in a spot where they have to make the decision to go low, which can provide disastrous results. And while, yes, CTE/concussions are an extremely serious matter, these lower body injuries are costing players significant chunks of time and many of them don't return to their pre-injury form.
"I would have much rather gone down with a concussion for two weeks and have to go through this for nine months," said Hockenson. "... You can't even train. I mean, I'm squatting, I'm doing stuff, I'm doing my rehab and getting back, but I mean, I would have had a normal offseason and getting ready to go for this season.
"I know obviously some [concussions] are worse than others and I don't want to go down that road of what's worse, what's better, what's this. But I mean, I've had a concussion. It took me a week, so I'm just looking at it from that pure timestamp and that pure timetable."
The ironic part, too, is the NFL recorded 219 concussions in 2023, up from the 213 logged in 2022. While it's still well below the previous high of 281 from a few years ago, per league data, it's something to keep an eye on moving forward. Is there a floor, so to speak, when it comes to limiting the amount of concussions in a single season?
Another key factor is concussion rates on kickoffs dropped 60% in 2023, from 20 incidents to eight, so the vast majority of the concussions happened during non-kickoff related plays. It'd be different if kickoffs were responsible for a large chunk of the concussions, but that's not the case.
There still needs to be more added to the sample size, but if there is indeed a floor, here, then the NFL should look at adjusting its rules. Because there's no reason to keep putting players in this position if there is a "wall" that limits the effectiveness of the rules.
But, until then, hopefully players have the awareness to avoid these hits, when possible. They can only control so much, though, so it unfortunately won't be a surprise if we're still having this conversation at some point during the season.
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