I remember playing Madden 2005 and being super excited about the addition of the "hit-stick". In the previous iteration of the popular football video game, offense was extremely over-powered leading to a game that was not nearly as fun as it could have been. Since I am a fan of the New England Patriots and at the time the defense was the teams biggest strength, it was not fun to play as that team. Madden 2005 changed that, and the "hit-stick" was a big part of it. By the time Madden '08 came out, the "hit-stick" had evolved into its 2.0 version. In that one, a player that flicked up on the stick laid bone-crushing hits on poor running backs. More notable, especially by today's standards is that by flicking the stick low, you could dive low on players in an attempt to take out larger backs who would otherwise run you over.

I remember doing an open-field tackling drill back in high-school. Whenever we did tackling drills, we always split with the rest of our positions. This made it fun for the line-man because it was the only time we ever got to experience some glory and carry the football. It was my sophomore year and I got paired with one of the largest kids on the team. As a sophomore, I was certainly one of the smaller kids and seeing that this was an open-field tackle, I knew I only had one choice. In fact, I was encouraged to do it. Go low. If I tried to take him head-on, I would just get run over. I went for it, aiming my face-mask for the hip area, just trying to bring him down in any way possible. I still ended up getting demolished and I'm pretty sure I still have a shoulder issue because of it.

The idea of going low in football is as old as football itself. Bigger guys running full-speed down the field are difficult propositions to stop with a typical wrap-tackle. Sure, they might be slowed, but by no means will they be stopped. The goal of football defense is to ultimately stop the opposing offensive player by any means necessary. If an opposing ball-carrier is a big hulking terminator looking fella that looks ready to make one pay for even trying to tackle them, sometimes the best course of action is to tackle low.

The NFL has seen a multimillion dollar law-suit settlement regarding player mental health and responded by trying to eliminate high-hits from the league. This isn't just dangerous high hits, such as ones where players lead with the crown of the helmets which is the absolute wrong way to tackle. That's always where the problem was. Leading with the face-mask to make contact with the tacklers shoulder pad is how kids are taught to tackle, not lowering the helmet to deliver stupid tackles that are dangerous to everyone involved. To counter it, the NFL decided to simply outlaw anything sort of high and fining those that choose not to change.

So I will now ask you. If you were an NFL player, and a large hulking man was running with the ball towards you at close to full-speed and the powers that be were going to fine you for anything that could even be "legal" in the upper part of the body, where would you aim your tackle on Rob Gronkowski?