The head coach of reigning Superbowl champions, the Seattle Seahawks, has released an instructional video detailing how he uses rugby to teach players the most effective way of tackling.
Pete Carroll is seen as something of an innovative coach in the NFL and while much of the material in this video will be familiar to anyone with a basic understanding of rugby tackling, the introduction of these techniques is being praised for cutting down on head injuries in American Football.
Carroll has called his revised tackling technique 'Hawk Tackling' and the video has been sent to 14,000 high school football programmes in an attempt to ensure the new technique becomes more widespread.
Former NFL coach and commentator John Madden is in no doubt about how effective the video could be in changing the technique which is used in the NFL.
We’ve been looking for something like that for a long time. One of the things the Commissioner is trying to do is take the head out of football when it comes to tackling, not using the head for contact.
So we’re working on that and the question was: OK, if we take the head out, what do we put in? And Pete came up with this video. It’s not only good, it’s great. When I first looked at it, it was beyond what I thought it could have been and it was as close to perfect as it could be.
'If we take the head out, what do we put in?' Maybe it's just because we've been around rugby for so long, but surely that could have been answered before now.
[Seahawks]
