Buddy Teevens: Not tackling in practice helps Dartmouth defense
Dartmouth Football coach Buddy Teevens joined the show to talk about a new Ivy League policy banning tackling in practice. Teevens said that his team hasn’t tackled in practice in five years and the results have been statistically better tackling. Teevens explained that they use robots to practice tackling. And he said that his practices closer resembled what they do in the NFL.
Teevens explained why the policy helps them tackle more effectively: “We practiced it more. A Dartmouth Football player will never tackle or be tackled by a teammate during his four-year career. But we average 500-800 tackles per year per defensive player. We do it in tackle circuits, on bags, a mobile tackling device that allows us to hit a moving target. …. We’re doing more tacking than most people in the country we just don’t hit each other.”
Teevens thinks this policy should spread further than just the Ivy League: “I tell coaches either we change the way we coach the game or we won’t have a game to coach. … If everyone stepped away from the paranoia about taking things away and say do we really need this much contact? Tackling is like riding a bike, you don’t forget how to do it.”