As player safety measures in football have become increasingly prevalent and important in recent years, tackling outside of games has come under fire.
Former Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens, who passed away in 2023, pioneered the movement to eliminate tackling in practices. Others around the country took a while to come around, but many programs have followed suit in some degree.
Count Curt Cignetti’s Indiana Hoosiers among those followers. Throughout spring practice, IU is simulating tackling in various ways, without actually tackling each other to the ground. That’s what the team did all throughout last season as well.
“We’ll do a tackling circuit before practice. Guys coach the fundamentals of tackling,” Cignetti said on Thursday. “Last three or four years, we haven’t tackled every scrimmage. Last three years, I think we’ve tackled in the spring game. And the last couple, we didn’t tackle at all in the fall, still led the country in run defense and second in the country in least amount of yards.”
Cignetti said the Hoosiers are only tackling one time this spring: during the spring game. The team “thuds,” essentially working on wrapping up for a tackle in a safer way, and without bringing the other player to the ground.
The numbers he referenced for Indiana’s strong 2024 defense do check out. But according to Pro Football Focus, IU finished last season with the third-most missed tackles in the Big Ten, topped only by Penn State and Purdue. The Hoosiers also finished with the third-worst missed tackle percentage in the conference ahead of the same two teams.
That could be a byproduct of a number of different things, which may not even be related to not tackling in practice. But it does at least illustrate that even despite Indiana’s stout defense last season, the team still had a bit of a tackling weakness.
Still, Cignetti is steadfast in his belief that executing the fundamentals of tackling in practice and spring camp will lead to strong tackling in games.
“Good players can tackle,” Cignetti said. “Ankles-stiff, hips-stiff athletes have a hard time tackling.”
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