Bluegrassrivals

Irony is most of the spearing incidents turn into friendly fire. We've seen a major influx of head, neck, shoulder, and back injuries to the offender and the defender ( however we'd like to label it ) in the last 10 years.

Sure, players are stronger and faster since the 60's but as a football student of the 70's and 80's I witnessed plenty of great hits leading with the shoulder and forearm.

Butkus was more of a wrestler, Clay Mathews and Ronnie Lott would literally cause your nasal cavities to expel their contents with a forearm or shoulder.

Is it simply a matter of telling players to keep there head up? Your thoughts please...

^ Football over the last 25 years lost the skill of tackling. Contact and Wrap has been replaced by Missiling at the offensive player. 25 years ago, a defensive players contact on the offensive player meant a tackle. We now complain about all the missed tackles! Well, that's because no one tackles anymore....

It is the missiling that causes the head-to-head contact

Not everyone is missiling.

Who are the top " Tacklers ?"

I was actually having a discussion about this with my wife yesterday after watching two players on the same team hit helmet-to-helmet leading head first to tackle someone.

I'm not sure when the fundamentals of tackling dissapeared.

Stardust Wrote:^ Football over the last 25 years lost the skill of tackling. Contact and Wrap has been replaced by Missiling at the offensive player. 25 years ago, a defensive players contact on the offensive player meant a tackle. We now complain about all the missed tackles! Well, that's because no one tackles anymore....

It is the missiling that causes the head-to-head contact

Agreed. A simple wrap-up can accomplish quite a lot.

There is no such things as "form tackling" in the NFL.