Eagles’ Tush Push survives as an NFL owners vote that would have banned it falls short
After the Eagles mounted a defense against the potential ban of its most successful and controversial play, a vote on the Packers' proposal for a rule change failed.
The Tush Push isn’t getting pushed out of the Eagles’ playbook anytime soon.
At the spring league meetings Wednesday in Eagan, Minn., clubs failed to pass a rule change proposed by the Green Bay Packers that states an offensive player may not “push or pull a runner in any direction at any time,” which would have eradicated the ability for offenses to run the push sneak made popular by the Eagles.
The proposal needed at least 24 “yes” votes from the 32 owners to enact a change to the playing rules.
According to ESPN, 10 teams voted against the Packers’ proposal, including the Eagles, Baltimore Ravens, Cleveland Browns, Detroit Lions, Jacksonville Jaguars, Miami Dolphins, New England Patriots, New Orleans Saints, New York Jets, and Tennessee Titans.
The Eagles brought in a reinforcement to Wednesday’s meeting in a last-ditch attempt to persuade owners to vote against the proposal. Jason Kelce revealed on his New Heights podcast earlier in the morning that he was going to Minnesota to speak to attendees in an effort to dispel misconceptions about the perceived injury risk of the Tush Push.
ESPN reported in April that Buffalo Bills co-owner Terry Pegula said — perhaps jokingly — at the last league meetings before the initial proposal was tabled that Kelce retired after the 2023 season as a result of injuries sustained running the Tush Push.
“I’ll tell you this right now,” Kelce said on the podcast. “I’ll come out of retirement today if you tell me all I got to do is run 80 Tush Pushes to play in the NFL. I’ll do that gladly. It’ll be the easiest job in the world, and it’ll be like 80-some snaps.”
Even though the proposal did not pass, Atlanta Falcons CEO and competition committee cochairman Rich McKay said Wednesday afternoon that there was “a lot of support” for it, as it was “unanimously proposed” by the committees for competition, player health and safety, and owner health and safety.
“It’s not disappointing for me, for our committee, for the committees that did the work, because it takes 24 votes to pass anything,” McKay said. “We don’t set a low bar.”
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell also bristled at the suggestion, based on various reports, that he was in favor of the Packers’ proposal.
“No, I usually take a neutral position on wanting to make sure that the process goes well, but also that there’s a full discussion,” Goodell said.
Goodell said that the competition committee will continue to monitor the Tush Push and plays that result in the pushing of the runner downfield this season. At the end of the year, they will revisit those topics and decide how to move forward.
The previously tabled version of the proposal contained different language that appeared to specifically target the Eagles, and to some extent the Bills, seeking to “prohibit an offensive player from pushing a teammate who was lined up directly behind the snapper and receives the snap, immediately at the snap.”
The Eagles, followed by the Bills, have run the push sneak more than any other team. At the league meetings last month, clubs reportedly were split evenly on the issue after roughly 40 minutes of discussion, leading to the tabling of the proposal.
At the time, McKay said the Packers asked to review and potentially alter the language in their proposal. Ultimately, the delay and the language change helped the proposal garner more “yes” votes, but not enough to enact it.
The second version of the proposal closely reflected the language that existed in the rule book before 2005, when “assisting the runner” by pushing was prohibited anywhere on the field at any time. The language was changed that year to legalize pushing the ballcarrier because it was difficult to officiate downfield, according to Mike Pereira, who was the league’s vice president of officiating at the time.
“It was hard to tell who was pushing who,” Pereira said in an interview with The Inquirer in 2023. “Was an offensive player just pushing a pile? Did they have their hands on the runner? It just kind of became impossible to decipher.”
» READ MORE: Long live the Tush Push: Most memorable moments from the Eagles' signature play
Even though the Packers’ proposal did not pass, McKay expressed concern over downfield push-the-pile plays. He said there will be a renewed emphasis on officials blowing the play dead on downfield stalemates this year.
“In that situation, the whistle should be blown,” McKay said. “When there’s a downfield scrum, we want the whistle blown. We want the play shut down, as opposed to everybody just grabbing each other and pulling each other forward.”
The Tush Push has been scrutinized by the competition committee over the last few years. The group has discussed the play and monitored it during the season, but the Packers’ proposal was the first formal club-led attempt to eliminate it.
The Packers included player safety concerns in both their initial and revamped proposals, but league data revealed that the Tush Push led to zero injuries in 2024.
While the potential injury risk of the play was a topic of conversation in April’s league meetings, clubs also fixated on the highly subjective aesthetics of the play. Sean McVay, the Los Angeles Rams head coach who sits on the competition committee, explained at the time that he doesn’t like the “optics” of the play, claiming that it “looks like a rugby scrum.”
Jordan Mailata, the Eagles left tackle who previously played rugby in his native Australia, has taken issue with the play’s comparison to a rugby scrum over the last few years.
“I think it’s kind of crazy,” Mailata told The Inquirer in late April. “It’s kind of whack. You want to try to understand, like, I’ve tried to understand why they want to ban [it]. But when I hear it being called a rugby play, that angers me. Because I’m just like, ‘You guys don’t know what you’re talking about.’ It’s definitely not a rugby play. So it’s just frustrating. But whatever happens, happens. I’m sure we’ll figure out something else in the short-yardage game.”
Jalen Hurts and the Eagles offense have run the Tush Push with great success, contributing to the quarterback racking up 14 rushing touchdowns (most among quarterbacks) last season. The Eagles also converted about 90% of their fourth-and-1 rushing plays last year, largely thanks to the Tush Push.
» READ MORE: ‘Tush Push savior’ Jason Kelce defended Eagles’ signature play moments before NFL owners voted
Throughout the offseason, Nick Sirianni has advocated for the Tush Push and has encouraged members of his coaching tree to follow suit. In the days leading up to the initial vote, Sirianni told the NFL Network that he expected the Tush Push to have support from Shane Steichen, Jonathan Gannon, and Kellen Moore, all former Eagles coordinators turned head coaches. However, Sirianni’s efforts evidently were not enough to earn “no” votes from the Indianapolis Colts and the Arizona Cardinals (Steichen and Gannon’s teams, respectively) on Wednesday.
Before the initial vote last month, Sirianni emphasized why he values the Tush Push, especially because of the team’s ability to run complementary plays off a look that can generate explosive plays.
“Our job as coaches is to be able to mesh things that look alike together to create explosive plays,” Sirianni said. “You try to do that with your run game to your play action. You try to do that with your quarterback sneak play to your gadgety-type plays. I think it’s an exciting play.”