Ten NFL teams voted against banning the Tush Push today, leaving the Philadelphia Eagles free to convert short-yardage plays at will. Somewhere inside of a Tilted Kilt, a freshly extended Nick Sirianni busts out his finest shit-eating grin in exultation.
As befitting the play itself, the Eagles had to grind this one out. The Tush Push was in grave danger of being outlawed two months ago when the Green Bay Packers had seemingly amassed a quorum of votes (24 were needed) to get their No But Stuff proposal approved at the NFL owners meetings. At the time, Packers coach Matt LaFleur derided the Tush Push as being too “rugby”-ish to belong in football (American football has its origins in rugby). The organization also considered the play a safety risk (competition committee chairman Rich McKay said there was no statistical evidence that the play is more dangerous than any other) and caused “pace of play” issues (uh, OK). No sane person bought any of those arguments. Whether the Packers were acting on their own behalf or at the nudging of commissioner Roger Goodell, who is rumored to abhor the Tush Push, the intent was always transparent: We can’t keep letting the Eagles get away with this. Given what I know about the Eagles and their fans, that’s normally a sentiment I’m down with. But not this time.
NFL owners felt similarly, and ultimately tabled the idea at their annual meetings in April. But football fans worldwide were told owners punted on the decision strictly to give Green Bay time to massage their proposal—a cheek here, a lift there—to make it jusssst right. Once their revisions were finished, the ban was seemingly a lock to pass. Every fourth-and-1 play would be rendered 20 percent nicer, and the Packers would have a new rule in place that ensured they would lose their next Wild Card game in Philly by one touchdown instead of two.
This poop-aganda continued all the way into today, when The Athletic’s Dianna Russini, in a tweet she has since deleted, reported, “I’m told both the league’s competition and players’ health and safety committees have voted to ban the play. Despite the Eagles’ best efforts, the tush push is likely on its way out, sources say.” Instead, the Packers ended up falling short by two measly votes. Perhaps there’s a juicy story to be had in how the Packers lost support for their ban, but it’s far more likely that they never had the votes to begin with.
And that’s a good thing, because banning the Tush Push would have changed nothing. It wouldn’t have made football any safer. It wouldn’t have had any effect on the NFL from a competitive standpoint, nor would it have prevented the Super Bowl champion Eagles—who possess both the strongest QB in football and the best interior O-line in football—from winning games they were already going to win. This was, as NFL rule fights tend to be, window dressing. These arguments are never really about fairness, safety, or even football. They are, forever and ever, strictly about giving people more nothing to talk about.
This is an effort at which the NFL usually excels. Ever since Roger Goodell took over as commissioner, he has attempted to fill any dead air he encounters with a fusillade of bedazzled fluff. If that means hyping the schedule release, or changing the OT rules for 78th time to make it “fairer,” or instituting (and futzing with) a newfangled kickoff rule that most fans still don’t really understand, or banning a mildly rugby-esque QB sneak play, so be it. Whatever draws the eye of the world’s McAfees, the NFL will put it out there. In that way, and that way only, that makes the survival of the Tush Push something of an upset.
Do I expect the manufactured discourse over the Tush Push to go away? I do not. I’m still gonna have to deal with analysts yapping endlessly about it, with more teams decrying the play as unfair, and with Eagles fans bragging about their team’s butt prowess while simultaneously (and, ugh, credibly) shrieking, THE LEAGUE IS OUT TO GET US. All of that will be deeply irritating, but at least the play will remain legal. If you wanna stop the Tush Push, then stop it. That’s football. You’d think the people in charge of the Packers would know that.
Recommended