Ravens Lose Pro Bowl TE Mark Andrews for Season

Baltimore Ravens tight end Mark Andrews will likely miss the rest of the season with an ankle injury he suffered during Thursday night’s game against the Bengals, head coach John Harbaugh said. Andrews suffered the injury in the first quarter after a 9-yard reception in which Bengals linebacker Logan Wilson brought him down on a hip drop tackle. Andrews limped to the sideline and headed into the locker room.

Andrews was seen on crutches, and unable to put any weight on his ankle, according to the Amazon Prime broadcast. He never returned to the game after suffering the injury. Andrews had two receptions for 23 yards before the injury. Andrews, who’s one of Lamar Jackson’s favorite targets, has 43 receptions for 521 yards (12.1 average)and six touchdowns on the season.

Harbaugh questioned if the hip-drop tackle needed to happen at all in that situation, raising concerns about the tackle, which has been discussed as controversial.

NFL executives said during the league’s mid-season meetings in New York in October that they’re looking to ban the so-called hip drop tackle that has injured many offensive players, including Seattle Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith earlier in the season.

“It is an unforgiving behavior and one that we need to try to define and get out of the game,” NFL vice president Jeff Miller said. “To quantify it for you, we see an injury more or less every week in the regular season on the hip-drop.”

“What’s happening on the hip-drop is the defender is encircling tackling the runner and then swinging their weight and falling on the side of their leg, which is their ankle or their knee,” Falcons CEO Rich McKay, the chairman of the NFL competition committee, said.

“When they use that tactic, you can see why they do, because it can be a smaller man against a bigger man and they’re trying to get that person down because that’s the object of the game. But when they do it, the runner becomes defenseless. They can’t kick their way out from under. And that’s the problem. That’s where the injury occurs. You see the ankle get trapped underneath the weight of the defender.”

Pittsburgh Steelers inside linebacker Kwon Alexander ripped the potential ban on the hip drop tackle.

“They’re making it hard for us,” Alexander told Steelers Now’s Alan Saunders. “I don’t really know what the game is coming to, for real. I don’t know how to stop from tackling someone around the waist. … I give it about three or four years, and I think they’re going to go to flag. How else are you going to tackle?”