Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts scores a touchdown against the Commanders on the push play during the NFC championship game in January. (John McDonnell/For The Washington Post)
The NFL’s team owners are scheduled to gather Tuesday at a Minneapolis-area hotel for a two-day spring meeting at which they will consider measures to ban the tush push, modify the league’s playoff seeding system and move closer to allowing interested pro players to participate in Olympic flag football in 2028.
The proposals by the Green Bay Packers to ban the quarterback push play and by the Detroit Lions to revise the playoff seeding system are being reconsidered by the owners after they tabled both in early April at the annual league meeting in Palm Beach, Florida.
The Packers’ proposal on the push-the-quarterback sneak that has been the short-yardage specialty of the Philadelphia Eagles, the Super Bowl champions, has been debated particularly fiercely, both publicly and within the league. The proposal is expected to be revised at this meeting to prohibit a teammate from pushing or pulling the ballcarrier anywhere on the field.
It remains unclear whether the revised proposal will get the 24 votes among the 32 owners necessary for ratification.
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“Not sure about [the] tush push,” a person familiar with the owners’ views said over the weekend.
The Packers’ proposal, before the expected revision, was believed to have had the support of 16 teams at the Palm Beach meeting. So a modified proposal would need to pick up eight votes to be approved.
“We’ll see if there is a three-quarter consensus on any proposal, specifically the push-play proposal that Green Bay put forward or any other amending it,” Jeff Miller, the NFL’s executive vice president of communications, public affairs and policy, said during a video news conference last week.
“I can’t sit here and tell you that I have a prediction on how it’s going to come out,” Miller said last week. “But there was a lot that was discussed when we were together in March around whether that is a football play, whether it is appropriate if one or two teams effectuate a play extremely well to take that away from them, and then to look back at the history of the game over the last number of decades to see why that play — aiding the runner, assisting the runner, pushing or pulling — was taken out, from an officiating perspective. So all of those elements were discussed in March. And that conversation has continued.”
The broader proposal would reinstate a previous prohibition that the NFL had, before lifting it, on assisting the runner. The Eagles and others who oppose the proposed ban have argued that one team should not be punished simply because it executes the play particularly well. NFL health and safety leaders have said the dynamics of the play raise injury concerns. But there is no injury data, they have said, to support consideration of a ban.
The Lions’ proposal would allow a wild-card playoff team with a better record to be seeded ahead of a division winner. Similar proposals have failed in the past, in part because some owners have said a division-winning team deserves to host at least one postseason game.
League leaders have called this set of discussions intriguing. But some people connected to the leaguewide rulemaking process believe it remains a long shot for the proposal to be ratified at this meeting to take effect next season, believing it would more likely accompany the potential onset of an 18-game regular season.
The resolution on flag football, if approved by the owners, would authorize the NFL’s management council and other league committees to negotiate arrangements with the NFL Players Association, Olympic authorities and national governing bodies by which NFL players could participate in the 2028 Los Angeles Games. Some owners might have injury concerns about players or issues with the timing of players’ potential involvement.
But NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and the league have championed the growth of flag football and have expressed support for the prospect of NFL players participating in the Olympics.
The owners also will revisit a proposal this week to modify the alignment of the players on the kicking team on onside kicks, hoping to modestly boost the play’s sagging success rate. The league and competition committee opted to propose such a change, with input from special teams coaches, rather than attempting to get the owners to ratify more sweeping changes this offseason to onside kicks, such as considering a fourth-and-15 or fourth-and-20 offensive play as an alternative.
The owners approved a change to the touchback spot on kickoffs during the Palm Beach meeting, while making the NFL’s year-old kickoff format a permanent rule. The league and competition committee carved out the onside kicks portion of the kickoff-related proposal at that meeting, leaving it for reconsideration at this meeting.
The NFL will not hold a previously scheduled session of its diversity program for minority head coaching candidates at this meeting. The league said last week that it is revising the program and plans to resume it next May with a joint session for the coaches and minority general manager candidates.