This is how NOT to try to tackle LaGarrette Blount

LeGarrette Blount escapes the grasp of Washington Redskins free safety Dashon Goldson. Greg M. Cooper/USA Today Sports

By Henry McKenna @McKennAnalysis

November 9, 2015

2 minutes to read

There’s little room for error when attempting to tackle 250-pound running back LeGarrette Blount.

The New England Patriots’ bulky rusher carried the ball 29 times for 129 yards and a touchdown in the team’s 27-10 win on Sunday. It was the first 100-yard game for a Patriots’ running back this season. It was not the first time opponents learned, the hard way, about how difficult it can be to bring Blount down.

“You can’t arm tackle this guy. You want to tackle him, you better full-body him,’’ said Washington defensive tackle Ricky Jean Francois. “You can’t arm tackle this dude. I tried to arm tackle him a few times, I felt it from the top to the bottom. I gotta get better with tackling, but you can’t tackle a guy that size with your hands. You may want to cut him, chop him, something, but that hand-grabbing stuff? You might as well say he’s going to get another five yards after that.’’

The 28-year-old had five runs of 10 yards or more. On his longest run of the day, a 21-yarder, Blount broke a tackle in the open field and trucked three other would-be tacklers before finally being take down by a player he’d eluded earlier in the play.[fragment number=0][fragment number=1]

“He made some big runs, especially when there wasn’t a lot there,’’ Patriots quarterback Tom Brady told reporters after the win. “But [the way] he runs, it’s running through guys. He had a great kind of run where he spun out of a bunch of tackles and ran for I don’t know, 15, 17 yards or something like that there in the third quarter on a big touchdown drive. It was great to see it. Hopefully we can do more of it.’’

Blount’s first-quarter touchdown run showed off the sort of nimble footwork fans have come to expect from teammate Dion Lewis, who left the game on Sunday with a knee injury . Blount made a quick jump-cut upfield and squeezed through a hole into the endzone. Despite his impressive effort on that play, Blount doesn’t expect to copy Lewis’s style too often.

“Even smaller backs in the league, can’t do what you [Lewis] do,’’ Blount later said. “As much as I work on it in practice, it still ain’t me. It’s hard to shift a body as big as mine, as quick as he does his. I think I’m just going to stick to what I do.’’