NJSIAA Football Rule Puts Historic Limit On Contact In Practice

High school football players in New Jersey will spend just 15 minutes per week tackling each other in practice under a new rule the NJSIAA’s executive committee approved this week.

The New Jersey Interscholastic Athletic Association announced the change to the rule on player-on-player contact in practices on Wednesday and called it “a historic reduction” in contact. The executive committee voted unanimously on the first reading. A second vote to finalize it will take place before football season, Philly.com reported.

Under the new rule, full contact “has been reduced to the lowest level in the history of football –
less contact than mandates or recommendations by the NFL, NCAA, Ivy League, USA Football, Pop Warner, or any other football jurisdiction,” the NJSIAA said in a news release.

Previously, high school football players were allotted 90 minutes of player-to-player contact during football practices, the NJSIAA, the governing body of high school athletics, said. Preseason full contact will be limited to six hours total, including scrimmages. Full contact is banned during spring and summer high school football workouts.

“These new rules make New Jersey’s year-round high school practice regulations the most restrictive ever at any level of football,” the news release said. There are an estimated 23,000 high school football players in New Jersey.

The contact limits refer to ones that take a player to the ground, NJ.com reported, not the “thudding” periods where players hit without going to the ground.

The rule change was proposed by the New Jersey Football Coaches Association and the organization Practice Like Pros, a national group “dedicated to reducing needless injury in high school football,” according to the organization.

“The one certain way to mitigate football injury is to limit contact in practice,” said Terry
O’Neil, founder of Practice Like Pros. “New Jersey has pioneered a model that is sure to be emulated across the country.”

Practice Like Pros was founded 2013 and its efforts to reduce injuries in high school football are endorsed by a number of doctors and famous players, including Archie Manning, Mike Ditka, Dick Vermeil, and Tony Dorsett.

Serious injuries and deaths in high school football do occur, but they are extremely rare, according to statistics compiled by

A report by NBC Sports said rules changes, aimed particularly at concussions, have reduced serious injuries in high school football to the lowest levels seen in the history of the game, quoting a report by the National Federation of State High School Associations. The NFHS says there are more than 1 million high school football participants; in 2016 and 2017, there were two players each year who died as a result of injuries suffered in a football game. That number is significantly lower than the 35 players who died in 1970 directly as a result of a game- or practice-related injury.

“It (the rule change) was not a difficult decision” for the executive committee because of the support for the change from the state’s football coaches, said Larry White, executive director of the NJSIAA.

The new regulations began to take shape in April 2017, when O’Neil made a presentation to the NJFCA’s annual coaches’ clinic at Rutgers University. The NJFCA and Practice Like Pros agreed in July 2018, on a proposal that was submitted to the NJSIAA. Approval was granted last October by NJSIAA’s Sports Medical Advisory Committee and today by its Executive
Committee, the NJSIAA said. The Michigan High School Athletic Association is considering a similar rule.

Some coaches welcomed the change, saying they already limit to-the-ground tackling. “The kids are too valuable,” Vineland coach Dan Russo told Philly.com. “I’m all for anything that improves safety.”

Others were less enthusiastic. "That's a joke," Augie Hoffmann, coach of St. Joseph of Montvale, told NJ.com. "Fifteen minutes of contact per week? You have to learn how to tackle on game days. This is an intricate part of the game and I'm not saying we need to hit or tackle every day. I just think 15 minutes is a little extreme.”

NJFCA president John Fiore told USA Today the the definition of "full-contact" established by Practice Like Pros will create an easy transition for coaches.

"When we went and did the data over a year's time on how much full contact we were doing based on [the] definition, it wasn't difficult to get them down” to the time limits.

O’Neil of Practice Like Pros told USA Today his organization uses film from the Seattle Seahawks, Jacksonville Jaguars and Rutgers University to show how teams at higher levels develop tackling skills without full-contact practice.

"This is the revelation moment for most high school coaches to realize how much real work they can get done without tackling player-on-player," O'Neil said.

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A Lakewood football player gets tackled by a Toms River South player during the schools' 99th Thanksgiving rivalry game in 2018. Photo by Karen Wall, Patch staff