HamburgSports.com - Helmet & Unnecessary Contact

HamburgSports.com - Helmet & Unnecessary Contact

Recent Rule Changes for Helmet and Unnecessary Contact:

Over the past two years, the NFHS Football Rules Committee has made several critical rule changes towards helmet contact and unnecessary contact/roughness.
The rules committee eliminated "intentional" from the spearing wording in the hopes that all illegal helmet contact, which includes spearing, will be called by officials. This establishes a "no-tolerance" policy toward illegal use of the helmet. By removing "intentional" from the definition of spearing, this shall eliminate the official's burden of reading intent into a clearly unsafe act before imposing the appropriate rule infraction penalty.
In Rule 2-20, the committee placed butt blocking (the act of initiating contact with the front of the helmet to another player who is not the ball carrier), face tackling (the act of initiating contact with the front of the helmet to another player who is the ball carrier), and spearing (the act of initiating contact with the top of the helmet to any opponent) under the heading of "Helmet Contact - Illegal" to place more emphasis on risk-minimization concerns.
Rule 9-4 also clarifies illegal personal contact as any unnecessary contact with an opponent which is deemed unnecessary (not directly in the play, backside of the play, or after the play) and which incites roughness. This includes and not limited to charging into or throwing an opponent to the ground after they are obviously out of the play, or after the ball is clearly dead either in or out of bounds. A note was also added to Rule 9-4, that lists examples of types of illegal helmet contact.

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