For the last three NFL seasons, no single play, scheme or philosophy has garnered as much attention as the Tush Push, the borderline unstoppable version of the quarterback sneak that the Philadelphia Eagles popularized during the 2022 season. With the Eagles running this play with a near 90 percent success rate over the last three seasons, it shouldn't come as a huge surprise that this play has been met with pushback around the league.
But now the pushback isn't just coming in the form of skepticism in the media. At the league owners meeting in Florida next week, a vote to decide the fate of the play will take place. While there didn't initially seem to be enough support for the play to be banned, it now appears as if the rest of the league is coming around on the idea of taking this well-established advantage for the Philadelphia Eagles out of their playbook.
“I didn't think that this would probably be the year where I could see change. I feel like it's getting more momentum in terms of those opposed to it than I've ever heard before,” NFL insider Dianna Russini said on a recent episode of the Scoop City Podcast. “Usually, it's like everyone's like, ‘nah, nah, nah.' There's like those one or two people that sit on it that are against it, but it's catching fire. But there was only one team that brought it up. It was the Packers. Now, all of a sudden, everyone wants to ban it because they can't stop it.”
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Green Bay Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst confirmed while at the NFL Scouting Combine that it was the Packers who put the proposition on the table to ban the Tush Push, saying that, “The play is bad for the game,” and that, “there is no skill involved.” Banning the Tush Push for those reasons would set a dangerous precedent, though if a play were banned or altered in some fashion because of injury concerns, that's a completely different conversation worth having. However, according to Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio, there is no injury data available that shows the Tush Push is worth banning for that specific reason.
A Tush Push ban would obviously impact the Eagles, who popularized the play during the 2022 NFL season, more than anyone else in the NFL. The Buffalo Bills, who run the play far more often than any other team in the league besides Philadelphia, would theoretically be against a ban as well, though Bills head coach Sean McDermott has recently expressed safety concerns regarding the play, so who knows where Buffalo will stand in this upcoming vote.
For the Tush Push to be banned, 24 of 32 teams will need to be on the same side of the vote.