Eagles

Hip-Drop Tackle: There’s Nothing in the NFL Rulebook that Matches Gene Steratore’s No-Call Explanation

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Jan 5th, 2026 · 9:59 AM EST

---

Eagles tight end Grant Calcaterra had to come out of Sunday’s season finale when he was rolled up on what we thought was an illegal hip-drop tackle by Washington DB Jeremy Reaves.

There was, however, no flag for this:

Legitimately makes me so damn angry…

Why the hell do you even have the rule in the rule book if you’re not going to call the most obvious hip drop tackle of the season?

Grant Calcaterra is now in the locker room. No flag anywhere. Bunch of 🤡 @NFLOfficiating. What a damn joke. pic.twitter.com/ceiCRKejpx

— Josh Reynolds (@JoshReynolds24) January 4, 2026

Color commentator Ross Tucker questioned afterward why no flag was thrown. It seemed like a clear-cut violation with Reaves unweighting himself and then swinging through, landing on Calcaterra’s left ankle.

Then, a little while later, rules analyst Gene Steratore joined the broadcast, surmising that the reason the refs didn’t throw the flag is because Reaves touched the ground himself before coming down on Calcaterra.

It’s an explanation that isn’t referenced in the NFL rulebook, which defines hip-drop tackles like this:

ARTICLE 18. HIP-DROP TACKLES

It is a foul if a player uses the following technique to bring a runner to the ground:

1. grabs the runner with one or both hands or wraps the runner with both arms; and
2. unweights himself by swiveling and dropping his hips and/or lower body, landing on and/or trapping the runner’s leg(s) at or below the knee.

That seems pretty straightforward. Reaves grabs and wraps Calcaterra. He unweights himself. He then traps the left ankle underneath his right armpit. It should not matter whether or not his rear end hit first, and there’s nothing in the rulebook that talks about the defender touching the ground.

To be fair, Steratore wasn’t entirely assertive in his explanation. He didn’t say definitively that the refs made their decision for this specific reason; he seemed to be theorizing in real time. Steratore retired from officiating in 2018 and the hip-drop tackle was banned ahead of the 2024 season, so this would not have been something he whistled during his 15 NFL years.

Still, Calcaterra was injured on the play, so doesn’t that suggest that Reaves’ tackle matches the illegality of other hip-drop tackles? There’s a good chance he is retroactively fined.