[WalterBright]

When I did my one and only parachute jump, they cautioned us hard to jam our legs together for the landing, as any sideways movement would put all the load on one leg, which would break.

Sure enough, one of my friends I went with landed with his legs apart, despite the instructor yelling at him from the ground. He shattered the leg he landed on. (Parachutes weren't as gentle in those days.)

I expect it would be the same problem with the rocket. Any movement sideways when landing means the force is going to be on one leg. I wonder how they deal with that.

[dotnet00]

You can see that sometimes in the landing footage, the legs are pretty flexible, and they get some help from RCS thrusters at the top of the booster. Plus, as soon as the engine has purged any excess lox/fuel, a robot slides underneath and tries to latch onto several points, which probably helps by bringing the center of mass down.

There's footage online of some of the early landings when the robot had not been implemented, where boosters slid across the barge in part due to landing at a bad angle.