I think this shows serious promise, it's already working for Seattle and I think it's likely the future of the sport:
http://espn.go.com/blog/seattle-seahawk ... ks-defense
On the day after the Seattle Seahawks returned home from the Super Bowl last year, assistant head coach/defense Rocky Seto got back on a plane and headed to California.
He had made a commitment to the California Interscholastic Federation to talk to high school coaches about a topic he's become an expert on: tackling.
Seto coached 11 seasons at USC before joining Pete Carroll's staff in Seattle in 2010. He has been at the forefront of the team's mission to promote a new way of tackling, a rugby-type style the coaches believe is more fundamentally sound and safer than traditional methods.
"Rocky has been most integral," Carroll said. "He has been really the bell cow for us on this one. He is the one that does all of the teaching [of] it in the meetings. He’s got a real passion for making the point, and he’s always been involved with it with us."
The Seahawks have produced videos the past two years that demonstrate the leverage-based shoulder tackling methods, the idea being to take the head out of the equation.
In 2012, a guest coach from England visited the team's practice facility. Seto began to show him the fundamentals of how the Seahawks teach tackling: track the near hip; target the thigh; hit with the leveraged shoulder. The coach told Seto it looked like a rugby tackle, adding an element to the way the Seahawks teach it.
"I believe that’s how the game was originally played when the guys were wearing leather helmets or the helmets without the face masks," Seto said. "You didn’t want to put your nose right into someone’s chest or knee. You’re going to get hurt. So that’s just what the rugby guys do, as well. They try to get contact with the shoulders. So that’s the biggest principle."
