Deebo & Joe Part 2: NFL 3 strike rule for Dangerous hits + Lamar Jackson talks scrambling last season

**James Harrison** (0:00)
The NFL, though, had another thing come out. So starting with the 2026 season, the NFL will focus discipline on field rules violations. They are more likely to result in injuries, that are more likely to result in injuries. So what they did is, now if you get any of these, hip drop tackle, horse collar tackle, launching, hit on a defenseless player, blind side block, any player who commits three of these offenses, sorry, three of these five offenses during any one season. So you do it three times in any one season, you're going to get suspended for one game. This right here is wild to me, because the hip drop, that's the one that I have a real problem with, is the hip drop. Because you know how hard it is to hip drop somebody, do?
I know you ain't made no tackles, you know what I'm saying? Oh, you hope not to make no tackles.

**Charlie Batch** (1:01)
Right, hope not.

**James Harrison** (1:03)
Yeah, yeah. So the possibility of being able to purposely do that is hard. And what happens when the actual penalty that they called shouldn't have been called? Like, where the ref got it wrong? Like, can you, you know, go and review that and say, okay, that was wrong, you know, like, like, that's the thing that are you going to add that into it? How many times have you not? Well, especially for defensive players, how many times have you not been fined or penalized in the game? And then later Monday comes and everything's good. And then you hit that Wednesday, because that's when all the fines come through. And now you got an envelope in your locker for a fine, for a penalty that it didn't call.
And it's reviewed by whoever it is, reviewed by later on the tape. And they're like, yeah, that's a penalty that we, you know, we should have called. We didn't catch it. And here's your fine. Like, I just watched the Cleveland game where the receiver, he got lucky though, and he didn't get his legs caught up. But the dude wasn't trying to hit drop him, even though he did kind of hip dropping, but he was getting dragged, dude. He's not trying to hit drop him. He's trying to get him down through the process of making the tackle.
Like, what do you feel like about this rule? Like, is this a good rule? I can understand some of the stuff, but the other, like the hip drop is the thing that I have the biggest problem with.

**Charlie Batch** (2:45)
No, I'm with you. And I think that's the toughest one to defend.
This is not the rule of what it was 20 years ago when the rule was put in place because of the way that Roy Williams, the safety for the Cowboys, was tackling.
That was his signature move. And it wasn't until he did that to Terrell Owens, and Owens actually broke his ankle and missed those games and returned for the Super Bowl that season. That's why the rule was in place to eliminate that particular play. But if you're just going in on a natural football move, and this play is going to occur more sideline to sideline than anything, as a defender, as the ball carrier is running, you're just trying to get him down. And as your momentum is going, naturally you're going to try to tackle and you're going to slide down as you're trying to bring the guy to the ground. That is a very tough call to make. But even if you don't make it in a game, the NFL now is doing this accelerated replay that people in New York can actually call the penalty before the next snap happens. So that's going to be something that's going to be interesting to see, whoa, where did that happen? What did that, why did that flag come in late? That is a possibility of what can occur with this particular rule. This is going to be a challenge. And this all falls in that repeat offender category. It's like repeat offender category 2.0, right? And back 15 years, so years ago, almost 20 years ago, this is when I was fighting for you because you were hitting people too hard and they were suspending you.

**James Harrison** (4:13)
That's it, you hit too hard, you get fined.

**Charlie Batch** (4:16)
And that was it. So for me, at that particular point, for two consecutive years, I was in Indianapolis and I asked the executive, I'm sorry, the competition committee and I said, explain to me what a repeat offender is. They said two seasons and you have to get out of it. So again, what is two seasons? Because if a team that doesn't make the playoffs, that means four preseason games at the time, 16 games, that player would only have 40 games to get out of that repeat offender category. And they said, well, Charlie, that's the way it is. I said, no, it's not. Because I said the Steelers were the first team to win the Super Bowl as a wild card team. So you add those four games that you had to add in the playoffs. So now you're sitting at 24 games for a season. If you did it again the following season, it's very unlikely, but it's a possibility that a team, that a player for a team that went to the Super Bowl back to back years on a wild card team would have to play 48 games.