Josh Bookbinder on Texas Tech football linebackers learning rugby tackling techniques
Josh Bookbinder on Texas Tech football linebackers learning rugby tackling techniques.
On a list of more than 50 names from the Texas Tech football team, Richie Gray’s name is nowhere to be found.
However, if the Red Raiders are more effective at tackling this season, Gray’s influence could have something to do with it. The former Scottish rugby player, coach and equipment innovator has been advising Tech’s defensive staff and players by phone, Zoom video conference and a few times when he actually came to Lubbock since the spring of 2023.
“Whenever he’s here in person,” Tech’s inside linebackers coach Josh Bookbinder said Wednesday, “I want him to talk to our guys (players). Because when you listen to the guy, you don’t get a chance to listen to an expert very often in your life, right? This guy is an expert.”
“A, he’s an expert. B, these guys leave the room desperate to show someone.
“In the offseason, we have some (video) clips that we want him to watch and give us his opinion on how we approach things and stuff. Every time I’ve had him on campus or a couple times on Zoom with the guys, it’s been a learning opportunity.”
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Texas Tech Football uses Scottish rugby player Richie Gray for perfect tackling
Tech coaches have been taking a close look at how they tackle for over a year. Tech coach Joey McGuire told the Avalanche-Journal after spring football that he wants the Red Raiders to be better tacklers than they were last season.
“We changed our whole tackling strategy,” McGuire said, “because we weren’t bad, but we weren’t particularly good at tackling in open space.”
Rugby-style tackling techniques have been used in American football for several years, in part to prevent concussions. The Miami Dolphins hired Gray as a consultant to their team in 2016. More recently, he is credited as the brains behind the “tush push,” the rugby-like scrum the Philadelphia Eagles use to add power to an old-fashioned quarterback sneak.
However, his work with the Red Raiders focused on tackling.
“I think it’s just a new perspective,” said linebacker John Curry, “because our whole lives we’ve been taught how to tackle in football. But his teachings about tackling in rugby just gave us a new perspective on how to do things differently.”
Gray’s bio on the GSi Performance website describes him as an “elite performance skills/contact coach who has quite simply changed the way coaches train and players worldwide train and prepare for contact and collision.”
Bookbinder said he met Gray through a mutual friend at the American Football Coaches Association annual meeting in January 2023. The help flows both ways. While Gray offers his advice and insights to the Red Raiders, Tech uses some of the GSi Performance equipment he designed in training and provides feedback.
“He’s an innovator. He’s an inventor,” Bookbinder said. “He invented all kinds of equipment for rugby teams. Now he’s invented tackling equipment for football. So the tackling drills are still, I would say, in the same general universe, but he’s kind of helped us add some details.”
“The real benefit, in my opinion, is in the offseason. Our guys can use the equipment in the offseason and there’s a whole program they’ve been through the last two offseasons to keep them battle-ready, so to speak.”
Texas Tech Football tries to do tackling work year-round without physical strain
Bookbinder said his inside linebackers used Gray’s techniques the most, and that Tech’s defensive backs incorporated them even more this summer.
At a time when game-like, low-to-the-ground tackling has largely been scaled back in practice to prevent injuries and keep players fresher, the Red Raiders say they have found a middle ground. Linebacker Jacob Rodriguez said they will now work on tackling year-round.
“Obviously it’s a little different than rugby because we wear pads and a lot of different stuff than rugby,” Rodriguez said last week. “But tackling year-round is something you can continue to improve on rather than taking four or five months off. That’s hard to do. If you’re only doing tackling in spring ball and then during the season, you miss a lot of time to keep your fundamentals and everything like that.”
Rodriguez said the Red Raiders are working on their tackling technique without beating each other up.
“It’s not too much body contact,” he said. “You only have a tackle bag and you can do it without any padding. It’s very easy on the joints. But you still get your feet in the right position, your body in the right position. You always stay loaded, head up, all that stuff.”
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