The CFL has immediately eliminated full-contact practices.

SRSS Sabres head coach Jamie PetersSRSS Sabres head coach Jamie Peters says he has seen how limiting contact in practices has increased the safety of tackling, however, he adds he's also seen how tackling has become worse at the professional level. Peters notes, while professional players may be able to compensate and overcome the no contact practices, at the high school level there are many players who have never played football before and need to be taught the fundamentals of tackling to help prevent injury during the game.

"At the high school level, if that was ever a rule, we may as well just play flag football," notes Peters. "If we don't practice tackling, we won't be able to tackle in a game. We too, now, we limit our contact practices. Out of a two-and-a-half hour practice, we might only have 25 to 30 minutes of contact in a practice, and we usually have one non-contact practice a week. So, we might only have contact for 60 minutes in the course of a week."

Peters notes out of their 78 players this year, there are about 40 of them who have never played football before and says someone has to teach them these fundamentals, especially now that the CFL is no longer having contact in their practices.

"We have different areas of practice where we have full-contact and full go where we're simulating the game-like situations. We have other parts where we're just playing til thud, where we want contact but we don't want to take anyone down to the ground. Then we have other areas of practice where we're just working on individual skills and techniques and there's no contact at all. It's a matter of structuring those over the course of your practices to ensure that you're not exposing your players to repeated amounts of contact."

Eastman Raiders president Sean WalshEastman Raiders president Sean Walsh says a big issue at the professional level is long-term sustained injuries and non-contact practices could help prevent those. Walsh notes there are already discussions surrounding the cruncher level being replaced with flag football. He says the league does look at how to teach the kids football fundamentals while still keeping safety in mind.

"At this level, you want to make sure the kids are able to handle it, obviously, because some kids have bigger growth spirts than others. So, you never want to see anyone get hurt. For the Raiders we've always taken the approach of safe contact. We don't line two kids up on the line and have them five yards apart. We put them one yard apart; when they make a contact with each other, when we're practicing these drills, they literally are right close together. So, one guy isn't going to run up faster and get a bigger tackle, we try to stay away from those types of drills."

Peters says this new ruling may help prevent concussions and would be interested in the stats associated with preventing injuries with non-contact practices. Walsh adds the concussion factor may have played into the CFL ruling, adding professional football players are practicing more per week and playing a longer season which leads to a higher amount of contact per season then the Raiders league players would experience.