By JOSEPH WHITE
AP Sports Writer
Frank Gore runs right up the gut of the Indianapolis defense.
Defensive back Jerraud Powers delivers a big body-blow, but Gore
just bounces off and keeps on running, one of two broken tackles
on the way to a 64-yard San Francisco touchdown.
Baltimore's Ray Rice catches a screen pass and is surrounded by
four Cincinnati would-be tacklers - emphasis on "would-be."
Rice's right hand touches the ground, but he keeps running right
through the Bengals for a 48-yard score.
With the game on the line, Brandon Marshall outmaneuvers Ken
Hamlin, Terence Newman and a few other Cowboys for a winning
Denver touchdown in Dallas.
What's the deal? Don't these NFLers practice tackling anymore?
Uh, no. Not really. Go watch a professional football practice.
You'll see passers passing, receivers receiving, punters punting
and blockers blocking. Yet tackling, one of the game's essential
skills and the punctuation mark to nearly every play, usually
gets a miss.
"We teach tackling fundamentals," Cowboys coach Wade Phillips
said. "But there's no reason to tackle our own guys."
Instead, defensive players are taught not to tackle. They get
right up to the ball carrier and hit the brakes, just missing
him or giving him a little bump.
Make full contact, and coaches and teammates get upset.
Pittsburgh's Hines Ward threw a fit last year when he felt
safety Anthony Smith hit receiver Willie Reid during a drill.
The Steelers have a tackling dummy named Big Bertha, but that's
about as physical as it gets on most training camp days.
Sure, that keeps everybody healthy, but some Sundays can look
pretty ragged. Many players get a chance to tackle at full speed
only during exhibition games. It shows once the regular season
begins.
"It shows a whole bunch," Redskins safeties coach Steve Jackson
said. "That's one of the fundamental skills. A lot of people
don't tackle now because of the salary cap. You lose a guy
because of a tackling drill, you're the dumbest guy on the
planet."
Phillips says getting in position but not hitting is actually
harder than tackling - and that it forces his Cowboys players to
emphasize good technique. Jackson, after watching a poor
Redskins tackling performance earlier this season, isn't fond of
that theory.
"You train yourself to 'just miss,"' Jackson said. "And now (in
a game) you have untrain yourself in a manner of split seconds."
There are some exceptions. Many teams have live tackling during
specific short-yardage drills during camp, and, of course,
there's usually at least one preseason scrimmage that gives the
defenders a chance or two to bring someone down for real. Those
moments, however, represent a small percentage of practice for
most teams.
"Even if we are in full pads, you're not going to tackle a guy,
you're going to 'thud him up,"' Miami defensive end Jason Taylor
said. "You can never simulate what it's going to be like in a
game because there's nothing else on the planet like an NFL
football game. It's quick, fast, it's in a hurry, it's violent,
and you can't simulate that during the week or else you'll have
no one to play on Sunday."
Some coaches are more aggressive than others. Jets coach Rex
Ryan had a handful of drills with live tackling this year,
particularly late in camp. Josh McDaniels, unlike predecessor
Mike Shanahan, also had a physical, tackle-heavy camp in Denver.
"If they're poor tacklers, then you end up with a lot of yards
once the ball gets into the second level of the defense,"
McDaniels said. "You can eliminate a lot of big plays if you've
got good tacklers."
It's noteworthy that Ryan and McDaniels are both first-year
coaches and have yet to have a team decimated by injuries. San
Diego coach Norv Turner used to have live tackling every day on
running plays during his first camps as a young coach with the
Redskins in the 1990s, but the line got so long in the trainers'
room that he lightened up considerably as the years progressed.
Arizona defensive coordinator Bill Davis, an NFL assistant for
nearly two decades, was asked why the Cardinals don't have
regular live tackling in practice.
"You can't," Davis replied. "That would actually work against
you, because the body can only take so many hits and the
season's so long."
It hasn't always been this way. Training camp used to be about
getting in shape and hitting hard. It was survival of the
fittest.
"We had 130 guys, and you could practice for six weeks,"
Redskins coach Jim Zorn said, who spent much of his playing
career with the Seattle Seahawks. "There were a lot of those
kinds of scrimmages, we'd go live. But nowadays with 80 players
and really the idea that you want to keep everybody as healthy
as you can, you have to limit that."
Then again, as Miami's Taylor pointed out, these aren't the old
days.
"You just showed up for training camp, you smoked cigarettes at
halftime, a lot of things were different back then," Taylor
joked. "So, we don't do all that now. We don't tackle, but we
don't smoke at halftime either."
Humor aside, there's no ready-made solution for the tackling
woes. Practice it, and someone could get hurt. Don't practice
it, and Sundays can be painful for a different reason. Defenders
go for the big hit, but don't wrap up. They try to arm-tackle a
big running back around the chest instead of the legs. They take
bad angles - as if that "just miss" attitude from training camp
was still in play.
Meanwhile, scoring is up in the offense-minded NFL, which to
this day doesn't even count tackles as an official statistic.
Offense remains the side of the ball that sells. Where would the
wildcat be, for example, if the Dolphins were pounding their
running backs into the turf on practice days?
That's not even a consideration for coach Tony Sparano, who has
to answer to fans, an owner (Stephen Ross) and another demanding
front office boss.
"You wouldn't feel too good about it if on Wednesday you took
Ronnie Brown down in practice and he was out of the game,"
Sparano said. "I would have to do a lot of explaining to Mr.
Ross and Bill Parcells at that point. I wouldn't want that
conversation."
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AP Sports Writers Jaime Aron in Irving, Texas; Steven Wine in
Davie, Fla.; Alan Robinson in Pittsburgh; Arnie Stapleton in
Englewood, Colo.; Dennis Waszak Jr. in Florham Park, N.J.; and
Bob Baum in Glendale, Ariz., contributed to this report.
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