A helpful NFL player’s guide for the right (and wrong) time to hurdle

Hurdling is both an exciting and terrifying aspect of football. When hurdling another player actually works, it’s awesome. But when it goes poorly, it’s embarrassing, and worse, it can lead to an injury.

Hurdling has been a go-to highlight move for years, but recently it seems to that more and more players are doing it in the NFL.

That doesn’t mean every player should attempt it during a game. Luckily, we put together a handy guide to help.

Elliott was drafted by Dallas fourth overall in 2016, and led the NFL in rushing twice in his first three seasons. His production over the last few years has made him worthy of being considered one of the NFL’s best backs.

Doing things like this certainly helps that reputation. Elliott absolutely destroyed Eagles cornerback Tre Sullivan during a Sunday Night Football game in 2018:

That is absolutely perfect form: he clears the defender with ease and lands his feet and body forward so he can keep barreling downfield.

“Zeke says if these guys are gonna go low, I have to be able to show them that I’m gonna go over the top of them by hurdling ‘em,” said Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett in NFL Films’ The Hurdle.

He also had this hurdle against the Bears in 2016, during which he was airborne for a solid three years:

This isn’t a new move for Zeke whatsoever. He also did it at Ohio State:

Part of the reason Zeke can hurdle like this is that it’s literally in his genes — he hurdled in high school, and his mother, Dawn, was an all-conference track star at Missouri. His sister Lailah is a sophomore on OSU’s track team, where she runs hurdles, too. His other sister Aaliyah ran track and hurdles in Missouri as well.

Not all running backs agree with his decisions to go jump over defenders, though:

“He better stop that,” said Hall of Fame running back Tony Dorsett in 2017 via the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “That’s one thing that I don’t like. When you get airborne, you’re at the mercy of the hit, and sometimes you can’t protect yourself.”

Dorsett disagrees with Zeke hurdling, but genes don’t lie.

The Los Angeles Rams running back is a freak of nature, and he could probably hurdle in every single game if he wanted to. One of his best hurdles came during a 2017 game against Washington when Gurley jumped over D.J. Swearinger like it was nothing:

“You don’t really ever teach a guy — that’s not something that you coach,” said Rams head coach Sean McVay via The Hurdle. “I think certain guys, they just kind of have had to feel how to control their body and really since they were younger kids.”

Gurley does this type of thing a lot:

A good reason Gurley is so good at this? He won a hurdling state championship in high school in North Carolina, setting school records in the 110 and 300 meters. Gurley’s high school track coach, Andrew Harding, thought Gurley was a good enough hurdler to win a gold medal in the event.

“That’s how talented he was,” Harding told ESPN in 2017. “I really do believe he could have been that. I don’t make that comment with just about anybody, but Todd was that gifted.”

Like Zeke, Gurley hurdled in college, too:

Although Gurley hasn’t gotten injured from hurdling, he realizes the risks that are involved.

“One day, it’s probably going to end bad,” Gurley said on ESPN’s Undisputed in 2018. “Until then, I’m going to keep jumping. For the most part, it’s more DBs. Most DBs are not going to hit a running back high, especially if they’re going 100 miles per hour fast at them. It’s kind of just a reaction and for the most part, it’s been working.”

The Bills’ first-round draft pick made his second career start on the road against the Minnesota Vikings in 2018. He finished with 39 yards and two touchdowns on the ground, including this amazing hurdle over the Vikings’ Anthony Barr for a first down:

“I was trusting my feet, trusting my gut,” Allen told ESPN after the game. “There was a guy who was maybe three yards in front of the sticks. I knew we needed a first down there and we went on to score on that drive. It was a big play, but it was just another first down.”

This type of play coming from Allen might’ve been unexpected coming from a quarterback. But as Adam Stites pointed out, Allen’s athleticism shouldn’t be too surprising:

He had above-average results in just about every drill at the NFL Combine, including his 4.75-second 40-yard dash, 33.5-inch vertical, and 119-inch broad jump. But other quarterbacks have put up similar numbers and never looked good on a football field.

Those who want the Bills’ franchise QB to stay healthy might not want him to hurdle and risk injury, but it’s pretty awesome that Allen is able to do this in the first place.

The former No. 2 overall draft pick made a name for himself in college, where he finished as Penn State’s all-time rushing touchdown (43) and total touchdown (53) leader. But he was powerful off the field, too. Back in 2017, Barkley broke a Penn State weightlifting record when he did this:

Barkley’s thighs are so jacked we once came up with 20 nicknames for them. His speed and athleticism for his size is quite the combo. At the combine, he checked in at 6’0, 233 pounds, and still managed to run a 4.4 40-yard dash with a 4.24 shuttle and 41-inch vertical leap. During Barkley’s rookie season with the New York Giants, he rushed for 1,307 yards and 11 touchdowns, and was selected to the Pro Bowl.

During that same rookie season, he hurdled over dudes like Malcolm Jenkins with ease:

To avoid risking injury, Barkley may not hurdle in the future all too often, but it’s certainly fun to see when he does it.

The eight-year NFL veteran suffered a knee injury in December 2018 that sidelined him for the rest of the season, but he’s fully healthy for Seattle this season. So healthy, in fact, that he freaking hurdled Ravens running back Mark Ingram while trying to pressure Lamar Jackson:

Granted, Ingram was probably a lot easier to hurdle than, say, an opposing offensive lineman, but Kendricks made a good decision here since he was able to get to Jackson afterward.

During his NFL Combine, Davis ran a 4.38 40-yard-dash — part of the reason he was the No. 6 overall pick by the San Francisco 49ers in 2006, the fourth-highest tight end selected in draft history.

Incredibly, Davis has been able to maintain a 14-year NFL career, which is double the average league career length. At 35 years old, his style of play hasn’t slowed down one bit. During a 2019 game against the Eagles, he showed off this hurdle:

What’s even more impressive is that he scored a 48-yard touchdown after making this leap!

I’m just saying, I don’t know many 35-year-olds who can hurdle like this.

Making mistakes when you’re still a young player is part of the game of football. That’s been evident with tight ends, who have made incredibly poor decisions to hurdle in games, especially in 2019.

The 23-year old Andrews tried hurdling against the Cincinnati Bengals and well, he ended up fumbling the football because of it:

But even after the game Andrews admitted he isn’t ruling out hurdling completely in the future.

“I’m not going to stop being me, being an aggressive player,” Andrews said via Penn Live. “It wasn’t anything they did. I hit the ball out with my own knee, and I gotta be better than that. I can’t do that to my team. That’s not acceptable.”

Knox was selected by the Bills out of Ole Miss in the third round of the draft. Call it a rookie mistake, but Knox made an equally ill-advised decision to hurdle against the Titans:

The best part in this video is the announcer going “Mm!” during the replay because yeah, ouch.

Hockenson — a former Iowa Hawkeye and Detroit’s first-round draft pick — made a bad he had this scary hurdle attempt against the Kansas City Chiefs:

What’s worse is that Hockenson actually got hurt on this attempted hurdle, and had to get carted off the field after the play.

He was in the concussion protocol for a couple weeks because of this injury, too. But like the Ravens’ Andrews, Hockenson isn’t completely ruling out hurdling in the future:

“Nah, I’m going to go out there and play the game,” Hockenson said when asked if he’d stop attempting to hurdle. “I’m not worried about anything else. I’m just going out there to play the game, whether that opportunity presents itself or not. I’m not going to change anything based on one thing.”

In 2017, the NFL banned defenders leaping over linemen to block kicks. It’s a pretty tragic rule change, because at its best it produced beautiful block plays like this one:

That’s former Seahawks DB Kam Chancellor hurdling against the Panthers in the playoffs in 2014. This particular block didn’t count (Chancellor ran into the kicker after the hurdle), but it was still an amazing attempt.

Here’s what the NFL rulebook says about leaping now:

Running forward and leaping across the line of scrimmage in an obvious attempt to block a field goal or Try Kick, or apparent kick, unless the leaping player was in a stationary position within one yard of the line of scrimmage when the ball was snapped. A player who is more than one yard behind the line of scrimmage before or at the snap, may run forward and leap, provided he does not cross the line of scrimmage or land on players.

That doesn’t mean players haven’t tried. During a 2018 game between the Seahawks and Vikings, Bobby Wagner used his teammates to jump over the line to block a kick:

The refs should have called a penalty on the play since you aren’t allowed to use your teammates for leverage, but they didn’t throw a flag. So Wagner got away with one there.

There are obvious concerns with hurdling linemen, and the first one being safety.

During an August 2015 game between the San Francisco 49ers and Denver Broncos, the then-49ers running back Bush attempted to hurdle five-time Pro Bowl corner Aqib Talib. Let’s just say it did not go ideally:

First of all, to address Bush’s decision to hurdle: this is absolutely terrible, especially given how low Bush still was to the ground. Bush was lucky he didn’t get hurt here, as Niners Nation pointed out at the time.

Bush, at least, could laugh at himself after the game:

Glad Bush found the humor in this, but just a bad idea all around here.

What side of that line you might end up on might be a bit difficult to gauge in the middle of a play, but hopefully this guide helps. While NFL players aren’t going to stop hurdling completely, they can certainly take these suggestions into consideration.