The Philadelphia Eagles’ “Tush Push” play is as controversial as it is successful. While the play was not banned by the NFL last offseason, the league’s executive vice president of football operations Troy Vincent said Monday that one team has issued a proposal to ban it for the 2025 season.
The Green Bay Packers, who lost to the Eagles in the NFC wild-card round this past January, were the team that issued the proposal to the league’s competition committee, according to The Athletic.
The Packers haven’t been shy about their dislike of the play. Team president and CEO Mark Murphy publicly criticized it prior to the Super Bowl.
“There is no skill involved and it is almost an automatic first down on plays of a yard or less,” Murphy wrote on the Packers website. “I would like to see the league prohibit pushing or aiding the runner (QB) on this play. There used to be a rule prohibiting this, but it is no longer enforced because I believe it was thought to be too hard for the officials to see. The play is bad for the game, and we should go back to prohibiting the push of the runner. This would bring back the traditional QB sneak. That worked pretty well for Bart Starr and the Packers in the Ice Bowl.”
Last offseason, Vincent said that there wasn’t enough sound reasoning to ban the play. However, the league did create a rule requiring “pushers” to start at least 1 yard behind the quarterback.
The play, which entails of teammates (usually a running back) shoving the quarterback forward on a quarterback sneak, continued to be an integral part of the Eagles’ success during the team’s Super Bowl run this past season. The nature of the play, in addition to the possible injury ramifications of it, has led to some backlash since the Eagles starting using it in 2022.
“It’s not a football play,” Hall of Fame coach Bill Cowher said on “The Dan Patrick Show” earlier this month. “It’s rugby. They call it a scrum. I mean, that’s what it is, Dan. Let’s call it the way that it is. I mean, you’re pushing people and pushing them over. If it’s just a quarterback sneak, I get it, but it becomes like a push in the back, and it’s a scrum. It’s not a strategical play, in my opinion.”
It may not be a strategical play, but it’s certainly an effective one. The Eagles, whose success rate when running the play is around 90%, used it to score on the first touchdown in their eventual 40-22 blowout win over the Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX.
The play has received a good amount of pushback, though, for reasons that Cowher alluded to during his interview with Patrick.
“I think there’s a safety element to this,” Cowher said. “I would have to think, because when you have 600 pounds pushing on one person who’s trying to stay in there at 300 pounds. That just seems like it’s a safety issue.”
Like Murphy, Cowher is also a proponent of the traditional quarterback sneak. He is not, however, a fan of teammates pushing someone forward, which is a stable of the “Tush Push” and one of the main reasons why it’s so successful.
“The game of football is more strategic,” Cowher continued. “That’s rugby. Nothing against rugby, but if you want to get a scrum, you want to see a scrum, go to a rugby match.”
It’ll be interesting to see if the Packers’ proposal gets enough support to lead to another change, or even an end to what has become the NFL’s most polarizing play.
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