New contact rules for high school football practice get mixed reactions

Adjustments to the high school football playoff format are not the only changes coming to the sport in the near future. According to a Wednesday release from the Michigan High School Athletic Association, further restrictions on collision in practice are being implemented immediately for the 2019 football season.

According to the release, the MHSAA is limiting programs to “no more than six hours of full-pads collision contact per week during the preseason and no more than 30 minutes of collision contact during a week of in-season (after games begin) practice.” The MHSAA defines “collision” as “contact at game speed, with the execution of full tackles at a competitive pace, taking players to the ground.”

The MHSAA also specified that “thud” contact will be unlimited, defining thud as "full speed but above the waist only, with no player taken to the ground and no winner or loser. Thud contact is not considered collision contact.”

According to Chippewa Valley coach Scott Merchant, these new definitions will allow teams to do more despite the new restrictions on collisions.

“I’m really pleased that they made a differentiation between live-collision contact and thud,” Merchant said. “I think for most of us, very few of us are doing a ton of live or full collision or full-go in practice as it is. Prior to this changing of definitions, basically thud contact was considered collision too ... I think that, with this change, it will allow us to do a lot more in terms of tackling and keeping the head out of tackling and teaching proper form with that.”

Chippewa Valley won the Division 1 state championship last fall and Merchant says he already includes three different types of contact in practices. Along with thud and live collision, Merchant has “tag-off” contact where the players tag the opponent and then stop.

“If anyone is doing live contact for hours upon hours in this day and age, that’s just crazy,” Merchant said.

Detroit Cass Tech coach Tom Wilcher said the MHSAA is moving in the right direction with this new rule. However, he also has some concern when it comes to quality instruction time on how to properly teach athletes to tackle in a game, especially with those new to the sport.

“In order to teach safety, you’re going to have to have drills where you teach them how to hit and tackle and you’re going to spend more time with it," Wilcher said. "That’s the problem. It’s called time on task. If you limit the amount of time on a task, that means that you are limiting the amount of instruction time to teach the kids. That’s the biggest problem I have.”

Clarkston coach Kevin Richardson echoed the same concerns that Wilcher brought up.

“The thing that I hesitate on about this whole thing is that drills are great but you have to have some live contact to teach tackling,” Richardson said.

At the same time, Richardson also mentioned the MHSAA does not have an efficient way to police the collision rules.

“People are still going to do what they want to do,” Richardson said. “How are they going to monitor it? I mean, you take care of your kids anyway. Our amount of contact has dwindled so much from the old days that it’s unbelievable."

According to Freeland coach Kevin Townsend, the lack of proper live collision in practice could have a negative ripple effect for game nights.

“My only worry of the ‘thud’ is kids losing the technique of tackling,” Townsend said. “We do simulation drills, but nothing can replace what a tackle might be like on Friday nights. It will obviously cut down on injuries during practice, but might increase them when kids go full out on game days."

Over at Muskegon High School, however, the Big Reds already eliminated full-speed tackling from practice. According to Muskegon offensive coordinator Brent White, it has not come at the expense of proper tackling in games. In fact, White thinks the new rule will allow for better instruction.

“Essentially, the way that I interpret the rule is the state has actually loosened the practice rules a bit in allowing more team activity, more opportunity to teach kids how to tackle in a safe environment,” White said. “I don’t know how many teams full tackle in practice. I know that the majority of coaches I know and associate with ... none of us full-speed tackled around in practice. It’s just not a very safe practice. It’s not safe so we don’t do it.”

For some coaches, it will be a wait-and-see approach to see what kind of difference the new rules make.

New football rules make little impact in opening game

Can all statistics teachers please look away now, because we're about to attempt to draw meaningful conclusions from a sample size of one, and that's not something you're going to want to see? Thank you.

In the end, it was neither the game's ruination, nor the game's salvation. It was barely even a disruption.

On a miserable night in O'Moore Park, with driving rain and a biting cold wind into the bargain, the press box was a full house as the scribes and hacks came in their droves, hoping to see first-hand the dramatic changes that would be brought about by the new playing rules for Gaelic football.

Drawn up with a view to balancing the scale which has been heavily weighted in favour of possession football in recent years, whispers and mutterings from secret training sessions have swept the nation in recent weeks.

These murmurs told of teams completing three handpasses and then kicking backwards instantly, or even going to more extreme lengths, with headed passes and deliberate kicks to touch all supposedly featuring on the tactics boards of the various county teams.

That's the thing with coaches and managers these days. If you wrote a rule forbidding armed robbery, some know-it-all would be sure to find a way to strap a weapon to the chest of a man with no arms and claim that he was still following the rule.

If John Sugrue or Andy McEntee had any such tricks up their sleeve, they didn't reveal them last night.

In Sugrue's case, one suspects that he has looked into the whites of the eyes of the Standing Committee on Playing Rules, and decided that they are bluffing.

The Kerry native spoke after a game that featured precisely zero offensive marks, no contentious sideline kicks, very few short kickouts and enough space to make a kicking game relatively easy to execute, and he conceded that the new rules made very little impact on the game.

"You're looking at something that may not even necessarily be applicable by the end of January" he noted.

Suddenly, a flaw. A trial period only works if teams commit to the trial process, and Sugrue might not be the only manager who decides that he has more urgent priorities than trying to learn to work with new rules that may not even be in place for the start of the league.

Certainly the evidence on the field suggested that whatever work had been done by this Laois group, wasn't with these experimental rules in mind.

Andy McEntee on the other hand, spoke of how his Meath panel had worked to prepare for the new environment.

"It doesn't matter whether you agree with them or not, you have to abide by them. We bring it into every training session" he said of the rule changes after his side's win.

Aside from the fourteen-point gap on the scoreboard, that gap in preparation was evident in the first half. Three times Laois were penalised for a fourth consecutive handpass, while Meath rarely even put three together, and never four, for the full 35 minutes.

They used the foot pass well, but it was notable that they still did so with high-percentage kicks. They simply found more space, and kicked to free men – kicking into contests for possession close to goal was just as rare is it was in any intercounty football game played in 2018.

Moreover, the Royal County seemed to be conscious of this new paradigm on both sides of the ball, stepping off their men a fraction and offering up the short ball until the third handpass was played, and then attempting to pounce with sudden pressure to force an error - often with success.

Laois, in contrast, conceded space. Thus they conceded lateral kicks to the opposition and so rarely left Meath in a situation where boot-to-ball was the only option for the man in possession.

"Meath played with better structure, they had fellas in the right areas of the field at all times, they didn't have the packs of fellas defending and then packs attacking too much" said Sugrue.

The irony of this is that while Laois fell into the trap that the rule designers might have hoped – they used up their handpasses and often kicked long due to the lack of an alternative - Meath always left themselves with options.

Consequently, they rarely kicked long balls into the full forward line, instead spreading the play across the width of the field.

0-2 of the final Laois tally of 0-6 came from long, direct ball into the full forward line. Meath too got just two points from the same tactic, until Thomas O'Reilly's late goal when the result was already locked in, leaving them with a final yield of 1-2 from long kicking play out of their total of 3-11.

But because that option was on the table, Laois had to honour the threat, and so defenders like Ronan Ryan and Donal Keogan were able to get forward, attack holes in the defence, and deliver key scores in the first half.

We All Need To Be Familiar With These Basic Football Rules

If your significant other is a football fan you may find yourself frustrated and annoyed when he ignores you while the game is on, or acts skeptical when you ask questions about the game. Many football fans have been watching football for so many years that they just don't understand when others are unfamiliar with the rules and the players.

If you are dealing with this problem, or you simply want to learn about something that is so important to someone you care about, here is a very brief summary of the basic rules of football. Being familiar with these basic football rules will help you to understand what is happening on the field, and your understanding will improve the more that you watch the game.

During a football game there are two teams of 11 men each on the field. At no time can any one team have more than 11 men on the field. Each game is divided into four quarters made up of 15 minutes of actual playing time. The time from the start of a game until the end may vary greatly depending on a number of factors: the number of timeouts taken, time for officials to review plays, injuries during the game, commercial breaks, and the halftime break.

Each team has their own units of men who only play Defense or Offense, or who are on "Special Teams" that only come onto the field in certain circumstances.
Assume that Team A wins the toss; Team A starts on Offense. The Offense wants to move the ball down the field into the end zone to score points. This is accomplished by passing or by running with the ball. The quarterback has the responsibility to either throw the ball to a receiver, hand off the ball to a running back, or run with the ball himself.

Every time the Offense moves the ball at least 10 yards towards their goal they achieve a "first down." The Offense has four chances maximum to accomplish each first down. If they can't do it, there is a "turnover" and the other side "gets the ball" and can now play Offense.

In our example above, Team B begins by playing Defense. The Defense tries to prevent the Offense from moving the ball down the field for a score by tackling the player with the ball or intercepting the ball thrown by the quarterback. If Team B's Defense can get the ball away from Team A's Offense Team B can now attempt to score points.

If an Official believes that a player has violated the rules, he will toss out a yellow penalty flag. This is what the announcer means when he says "there is a flag on the play." The rule violation is not necessarily an intentional act. It may be for a bad or illegal tackle – hitting another player in a way that the rules do not allow because of the likelihood of injury, for example, but it may be simply for stepping out of bounds during the play. The Officials may consult with each other and sometimes even watch an instant replay before they make a ruling on the penalty call. If the penalty is assessed the team that violated the rules may have to repeat the play, lose some of the

Though the basic rules are stated here, there are a great many more, very detailed rules governing play, and those rules that may be updated or modified every year. Additionally, there are differences in some of the rules for professional football and college football. You may notice that the officials, coaches, players, and commentators do not always agree about penalty flags, failure to call a penalty, and rulings on contested penalty flags, so it is not surprising that the fans may also disagree.

You Need To Know About These Football Rules

Football is a physical sport. There is a large chance of injury and therefore the rules of the game have been tweaked over the years to help prevent players from injury as much as possible. The basic rules of the game and the basic concept of the game have not changed since it was invented but modern technology, as well as the push to prevent injury has changed some of rules for the better in recent years.

Recently, a big push has been to block helmet to helmet hits when a defender will lead a hit on an offensive player with this helmet. This action has resulted in personal foul penalties of 15 yards and often times have resulted in fines to the player that are levied by the NFL commissioner. There has also been a big push recently to protect the quarterback because he is often seen as a defenseless player and there have been a lot of controversial rules in recent years that do not allow defensive players to hit quarterbacks in the head, or to hit them once they have thrown the football to a receiver or running back.

When you are looking at football rules so that you can better understand the game, it is pretty easy once you have everything broken down. Let us start with the field and that it is rectangular and it is either played on grass or artificial turf that is green.

Football, as every other game, has its own set of rules and regulations to ensure one team does not exploit the other and the game proceeds in a disciplined manner and prevents physical assaults and injuries.

Football is often a famous in addition to popularized activity loved by lots of people. There are an increasing number of fanatic footballing fans would rather watch that exciting footballing game and need to find out playing the idea. However, if there anyone thinks about how exactly many attempts made guiding the exciting and successful football activity. Besides the good effort made by the players and coaches, there needs to be some essential and extreme rules to be sure the even holding of you.

There are rules and regulations for every game and sport. In the early 19th century, soccer is welcomed by people and it gradually began to has its own rules, but at that time the rules is ambiguous, so it become the main reason of nuisance.This change of rules has resulted in a large outcry from defensive players across the league who feel that their style of play has been hampered by the new rules. They have gone largely unheeded because there are now even more strict rules in place that guard against injury to quarterbacks or to other unprotected players.

Another big advancement in the rules of football has been the invention and the implementation of instant replay. Media networks have long used instant replay to show live audiences the play time and time again, and they have been able to dissect a play and see exactly what the correct call should be.

However, the officials down on the field do not have this luxury and therefore were prone to making incorrect calls because they simply could not see the play from the proper angle. Instant replay has changed all of that and now officials are able to review a play if they feel the need and even coaches can challenge the ruling on the field if they feel that the call was made in error. This is seen by many people as a good advancement in the game because it allows officials to make the game more accurate and it allows coaches to get correct calls made for their players. It is unfortunate when an official's call has to decide the outcome of the game but it is in the best interest of the game that it is officiated correctly. These advancements in technology have made the game of football more enjoyable and more safe for everyone.