Let football be football!
Finally, common sense has been used by the NFL. Normally, a league that just cannot help itself but to add year after year to its already overly litigious rulebook, enough NFL owners decided at today’s owners spring meeting that it’s finally time to push back on NFL strongman Roger Goodell’s latest attempt to turn the NFL into flag football.
The famous Philly Tush Push, which is a rugby-like play used by the Eagles in short-yardage, was on death row. Goodell didn’t like it. Usually, Goodell gets what he wants (or doesn’t want).
The Bucs are one of the few teams that have had success against the Tush Push — it helps to have Vita Vea anchored in the middle of the defensive line.
(Bucs coach Todd Bowles was against the proposed ban, saying rather than banning it teams need to learn to defend it better. It is unclear if the Bucs voted for or against the ban.)
From reports Joe read on Twitter about the vote this morning, it took a full-scale offensive led by Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie to persuade just enough owners to help keep football in football.
Among the arguments against the Tush Push were that it was an elevated injury risk (data confirms it was not) and that opponents of the play thought it was boring.
Well, gee whiz, if the NFL is going to ban boring, there are quite a few coaches who ought to be worried as hell about their careers in the NFL then. That’s sort of opening a can of worms there.
Also, in what has turned out to be a bad day for Goodell, NFL owners voted against a new seeding format for the playoffs in which division winners were no longer guaranteed a home playoff game.
Joe was against this as well. If the NFL was going to do this, why have divisions any longer? Joe offers up a compromise: A division-winner must have a winning record in order to host a home game on wild card weekend.