Have you ever counted the number of textbook tackles you see in a football game?

It doesn’t matter whether you’re watching a youth, high school, college or NFL game, the fact is they just don’t happen very often.

According to Sporting Charts, the average number of team plays per NFL game is 64.36. That means there are approximately 128 snaps per game. The vast majority of those plays end with ball-carriers being drug to the ground, gang tackled, knocked out of bounds or tripped up in some way.

That doesn’t mean the work we do to instill the fundamentals isn’t important.tween

On Saturday while watching the Foster Farms Bowl between Nebraska and UCLA, I witnessed what I thought was a great form tackle right before the two teams were heading into halftime.

Nebraska Junior safety Nate Gerry read a screen pass to UCLA’s Paul Perkins. Before Perkins could turn upfield and make his cut, Gerry initiated contact with the front of his shoulder pads and head up and to the side of the ball carrier.

It was a bang-bang play, which are some of the most challenging calls for officials to make because of the speed at which they happen.

The play resulted in a targeting penalty on Gerry that was upheld by the replay official, sending Nebraska’s star safety to the locker room for the rest of the game. The game’s play-by-play announcer quickly reminded me that Gerry had been ejected from his previous game against Iowa for the same penalty, and I was curious to review the tape from a few weeks prior.

Here are links to both of the tackles.

SEE ALSO: Hit by Nebraska defender may not be targeting, but it’s still a learning lesson

I’m not here to single out Gerry or the official who made the call. For me, I see a player who faced two similar plays weeks apart, and he was able to make a number of adjustments to the way he delivered a strike to the ball-carrier.

Even though the penalty was the same, Gerry’s approach to tackling changed. He took the lessons from the first instance and applied them to the second, and that will serve him well as his playing career moves forward.

Against Iowa, Gerry’s reaction was to lower his helmet and shoulder into a diving receiver with the intent to break up the pass. The result was unintentional helmet-to-helmet collision, an injured Iowa receiver and an escort to the locker room.

Two weeks later, we saw a safety who closed the distance between himself and the ball-carrier, buzzed his feet coming to balance and made contact with his shoulder pads at the top of the numbers while bringing his hands up through the ball carrier.

Textbook.

Both players popped up and went back to the huddle. A lot of credit should go to Gerry and the Husker coaching staff. I saw a noticeable difference.  Do you?

The penalty for targeting is severe, but it is changing the behavior of coaches and players in how they engage ball-carriers by bringing the strike zone down below the shoulder pads.

Officials are going to err on the side of safety and will call anything that is close. That’s OK.

I am proud to hear more and more coaches talk about the importance of safer tackling fundamentals. As we look to early 2016, we will see coaches attending clinics across the country, and my hope is that this topic continues to stay on the short list of improvements we can take to make this game safer.

Nick Inzerello is senior director of football development at USA Football, overseeing the development and implementation of the Heads Up Footballprogram. A husband and father of three children, Nick played wide receiver at Northwest Missouri State University. He worked for the Buffalo Bills and the U.S. Olympic Committee before joining USA Football in 2003. Follow him on Twitter @NickInzerello.