The NFL And James Harrison Called Out An ‘Abhorrent’ Viral Video Of A Violent Youth Football Drill

On Tuesday, a video went viral of a youth football tackling drill that saw one of the young players get violently taken to the ground on a helmet-to-helmet hit and was clearly shaken up. The prompt on the video was “are they too young to be doing this drill?” and what resulted was a number of former NFL stars taking to task the coaches that allowed this drill to happen, where the much smaller child in the orange pants is put in a terrible position.

Among those who called out the drill for being terrible and a “set up” was James Harrison, who no one would be confused with being a soft football player, who explained that things like this were exactly why he wouldn’t let his kids play football until he could be there to ensure drills and practices were safe and teaching proper fundamentals.

On Wednesday, the NFL released a statement, courtesy of Jonathan Jones of CBS Sports who pointed out that the drill in question seemed to be from a suburb of Charlotte, decrying the “abhorrent” nature of the video and pointing out how the league has tried to take steps to teach better coaching practices in youth football specifically to avoid such things from happening.

The drill is the exact scenario football has been trying to limit in recent years as more information about the dangers of head injuries has come out, and it is particularly dangerous at the youth football levels where you do end up with these dramatic size differences among kids even at the same age level. For the coaches of a team to put one of their kids in a dangerous position like this drew the rightful ire of many, including plenty from the NFL, and it shows that there’s still a lot of work to be done at all levels of football to change the culture of embracing unnecessary violence in the sport.