Vikings likely lost a talented player for the 2025 season to a play that the National Football League is trying to get rid of
It’s a frustrating play fo the Vikings in multiple ways
The Minnesota Vikings beat the Houston Texans on Saturday afternoon by a score of 20-10, but it didn’t come without any negatives.
When returning a punt in the second quarter, wide receiver Rondale Moore ended up getting tackled out of bounds, and he immediately was in noticeable pain, grabbing his left leg. It was a frustrating plan for a multitude of reasons, especially the result. However, the play itself is something that the National Football League is actively trying to get out of the game.
Rondale Moore suffers signficant knee injury on illegal play
Moore’s injury was given some clarification by head coach Kevin O’Connell, and it wasn’t good.
“I did want to update you guys, unfortunately, on two injuries. It looks like Rondale Moore does have a pretty significant left knee (injury). Won’t know until we MRI that tomorrow.”
We won’t share a clip of the injury, because it’s really difficult to watch, but the tackle apeared to be a hip drop tackle, something the NFL made illegal ahead of the 2024 season. The league describes a hip drop tackle as follows:
A hip-drop tackle occurs when a defender wraps up a ball carrier and rotates or swivels his hips, unweighting himself and dropping onto ball carrier’s legs during the tackle.
“You know, if you saw me having some dialogue out there, that’s what I was asking about,” said O’Connell when asked about Moore’s injury. “I have to watch the playback before I truly can give an opinion on it, but it was very, very unfortunate. Kind of seemed like it had a lot of the characteristics of that. But, you know, I know it is a three-part kind of process to actually call that on the field. We’ll see when we watch the tape. I don’t think there was any bad intent. There are guys who are out there playing hard and competing.”
It’s a frustrating thing for Moore, who suffered a torn ACL in the opposite leg last season during training camp with the Atlanta Falcons. It’s especially frustrating that the play happened on a (potentially) illegal play. The reality is that it will take a long time to fully eliminate the hip drop tackle out of the game, as it could take an entire generation to coach it out of the game.
For now, the Vikings will hope for some good news on Moore’s injury, but it didn’t look good.
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