The arguments have been made. The goalposts have moved. The question is whether the ongoing effort to get rid of the tush push is good for the game.
It’s not. And the entire effort is a bad look for the sport.
Yes, some want to get rid of it. And they’ve come up with flimsy, shifting arguments.
The discussion goes something like this.
“The play isn’t safe.”
“OK, where’s the injury data?”
“There is none.”
“So how do you know it’s not safe?”
“It might not be safe.”
“How do you know that?”
“It looks like it might not be safe. We need to be proactive.”
“But you’re never proactive. Why are you suddenly being proactive now?”
“Well, it doesn’t look like football.”
“Does it comply with the current rules of football?”
“Yes, but it doesn’t look like a football play.”
“To whom?”
It all feels like a way to take something away from the NFL’s best team. While some opponents of the play might genuinely believe the reasons that have been given, the circumstances justify the very real perception that it’s less about doing the right thing and more about sour grapes.
At a minimum, the debate gives the other 31 teams a way to explain away their failure to compete with the defending Super Bowl champions.
Remember when the Patriots were constantly accused of cheating? Yes, they were guilty of some cheating. But the accusations became ridiculous. Still, when owners demanded to know why their teams couldn’t compete with the Patriots, saying “they cheat” sounded a lot better than admitting they’re smarter, they work harder, they’re more innovative, and they’re just better than their competitors. (The Chiefs have been dealing with that recently, with their success being undermined by the misguided idea that the officials are trying to help the Chiefs win.)
The current tush push debate, regardless of its outcome, allows teams that can’t beat the Eagles to blame it on a play that isn’t a football play and that basically is cheating but for the fact that at least 24 teams haven’t decided to make it cheating.
It’s a dangerous precedent. If a team comes up with a consistently successful technique, the goal should be figuring out how to stop it and/or figuring out how to do it. The strategy should not be to hide behind safety or aesthetics or any other half-baked justification in an effort to come up with enough support to kill the play or, at a minimum, to create the perception that it’s unfair or wrong to use it.
The Eagles might be tempted to say, “Fine. Ban the tush push. We’ll still run the quarterback sneak in a way that no one can stop it.” Here’s hoping they don’t, for two reasons.
First, the next proposal could target the quarterback sneak. Second, surrendering would legitimize the effort to counter a play that works by getting rid of it. Or, at a minimum, by raising the idea that there’s something wrong with using it.
The second reason is the main reason for the Eagles to stand firm. Those who can’t compete with a successful play shouldn’t be able to collectively cook up pretextual reasons for removing from the game the thing they can’t handle.
For now, it’s the tush push. At some point, it’ll be something else. While it might not be good for the game to have one team dominate until other teams can come with an answer, it’s horrible for the game to let the answer be coming up with trumped-up reasons to remove a play that other teams don’t like.
The Eagles will be visiting the White House later this month. Whether all of the Eagles will be visiting the White House remains to be seen.
On Tuesday, owner Jeffrey Lurie emphasized that each player must decide whether he wants to go.
“Our culture is that these are optional things,” Lurie told reporters. “If you want to enjoy this, come along and we’ll have a great time and if you don’t, it is totally an optional thing.”
It could never be mandatory, at least not within the confines of the Collective Bargaining Agreement. But certain things that aren’t mandatory as a technical matter can become mandatory as a practical matter. Lurie seems to be one of the owners who will truly let the players decide what to do, without pressure of any kind.
For Lurie, the choice was made to accept the invitation to attend.
“We just felt this is a time honored tradition being invited by the White House,” Lurie said. “So there was no reticence whatsoever. To be celebrated at the White House is a good thing. There were special circumstances [in 2018] that were very different, and so this was kind of an obvious choice and look forward to it. . . .
“When you grow up and you hear about, ‘Oh, the championship team got to go to the White House,’ that’s what this is. And so we didn’t have that opportunity and now we do. I think we’re all looking forward to it.”
What would Lurie say to fans who don’t want the Eagles to embrace the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?
“This is really just an invitation from the White House,” Lurie said. “That’s all this is, and we’re not politicizing it in any way. Not for us.”
It was political in 2018, given the back and forth over protests during the national anthem. The Eagles were invited. And then it became clear plenty of the players wouldn’t go. And then they were uninvited.
Currently, it’s unclear whether and to what extent Eagles players will choose to go or to not go. With the visit nearly four weeks away, it’s possible that something that happens between now and then will impact the final decision(s) made by one or more players.
Whenever someone asks about the longtime hammerlock Rich McKay has had on the Competition Committee, the answer is simple.
McKay, as the belief goes in league circles, continues to chair the Committee because the Commissioner wants him to. And, as the belief also goes, the Commissioner wants McKay in that position because McKay ultimately delivers whatever the Commissioner wants.
And so the question becomes, as it relates to the sudden story of the offseason, what does Roger Goodell want when it comes to the tush push?
With the NFL going full-blown red state/blue state on the issue, it’s highly unlikely that Goodell is a neutral observer. And his comments from Tuesday point to his preference. He apparently wants the NFL to bring back the rule that prohibits any pushing of the player with the ball.
“I think that makes a lot of sense in many ways because that expands it beyond that single play,” Goodell said. “There are a lot of plays where you see people pushing or pulling somebody that are not in the tush push formation that I think do have an increased risk of injury. So I think the Committee will look at that and come back in May with some proposals.”
A rule against any and all pushing would seem to be less about the tush push and more about addressing whether it’s safe and proper for a player to be pushing a teammate with the football. Some would say, for example, having an offensive lineman barrel down the field at full speed and slam into the pile in an effort to push it past the line to gain raises even greater risks than the tush push does.
But the context is obvious. It’s all about taking away something the Eagles do better than anyone. And the goalposts are moving from safety to aesthetics to justify the basic reality that some teams don’t like the fact that the Eagles are kicking everyone’s ass.
Why would the Commissioner care about that? Parity is good for the NFL. If fans of the other 31 teams believe the Eagles will continue to run roughshod over the league — fueled by a go-to move that makes short-yardage plays a near-automatic win — those fans might be less engaged in all things football.
To be as popular as possible, and to make as much money as possible, the league needs to have all fans of all teams believe that every team has a chance, every year. Currently, there’s a small handful of true contenders. And the Eagles stand out among them. On the heels of back-to-back Super Bowl wins by the Chiefs, we’re looking at two (and maybe three) in a row by the Eagles.
That’s reason enough for the Commissioner to want to stir things up. To give more teams a chance. And to take away the cheat code that is available to all teams but only one of which has figured out.
The Packers made a flawed proposal aimed at neutralizing the tush push. It nevertheless won support of half of the league.
Kalyn Kahler of ESPN.com reports that 16 teams supported Green Bay’s submission, which would have banned players from “immediately” pushing the player who receives the snap. While that number fell eight votes short of the minimum needed to change the rules, the 50-50 split confirms that the debate is very real — and that, when the owners gather again in May, it could go either way.
Still, at least half of the teams that weren’t prepared to vote for the Packers’ proposal will need to change their minds for the status quo to be altered.
The problem could very well be the formulation of Green Bay’s proposal. That rule would have cracked open a separate can of worms for the league regarding the proper way to officiate the play, introducing subjectivity and potential inconsistency from crew to crew regarding whether a push was, or wasn’t, immediate.
And if, for instance, a flag is thrown to nullify a key tush push touchdown when the shove arguably wasn’t “immediate,” the league would have to deal with criticism of the officials that could morph into claims from the tinfoil-hat crowd that the fix is in.
The question becomes whether it makes sense to rewind the clock to 2005 and prohibit all pushing of a ballcarrier. The rule changed because downfield shoving of a player who was fighting for more yardage was never called. No one realized 19 year ago that this would eventually morph into the dilemma with which the stewards of the sport are now wrestling.
A complete ban on pushing the player with the ball would become much easier and cleaner to officiate. And while there could be instances where an offensive lineman rumbles to the pile and gives a healthy shove without a flag being thrown, it would eliminate the strategic use of pushing and shoving as an affirmative strategy at the line of scrimmage.
It all comes down to whether 24 owners will get behind the idea of keeping teammates from getting behind the quarterback and ramming him past the line to gain or the goal line. A complete ban on pushing would more directly and conclusively solve the problem, with no need for the officials to determine whether or not a shove was “immediate.”
An answer is coming before Memorial Day. Which, in the grand scheme of things, is about as immediate as it could happen.
The tush push has become the story of the week. With the subject tabled until the next league meetings in May, it could become the story of the entire offseason.
It feels at times like a moving target. Is the concern safety-related? Is it about football aesthetics? Are both a pretext for good, old-fashioned jealousy?
Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie met with reporters on Tuesday, and the first question related to his team’s bread-and-butter play.
“I think for everybody, including myself especially, health and safety is the most important thing when evaluating any play,” Lurie said. “We’ve been very open to whatever data exists on the tush push and there’s just been no data that shows that it isn’t a very, very safe play. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be pushing the tush push.
“But I think, first of all, it’s a precision play. It’s very practiced. We devote a lot of resources to the tush push. We think we have an unusual use of personnel because we have a quarterback that can squat over 600 pounds and an offensive line that’s filled with All-Pro players. That combination with incredible, detailed coaching with [offensive line coach/run game coordinator Jeff] Stoutland, has created a play we can be very successful at. There’s other ways of gaining that half yard, that yard. There’s quarterback sneaks, other types, but we’ve been very, very good at it.”
He also made a point that often gets made in this context: Any team can use it.
“It’s a play that’s available to every other team in the league, and I think it hasn’t been used more than five times by almost every team in the league,” Lurie said. “Buffalo is an exception. The usage rate has gone down over the last year dramatically in the league. We’re still very good at it. We’re not as good as we were the year before. We’ve got to adapt.”
Adaptation is the key. Trends come and go, offensive and defensive. It’s incumbent on defenses to stop a good offensive technique, and it’s for offenses to counter effective defensive strategies.
“I think for all of us that have followed NFL football over the decades, there’s an ebb and flow to offense and defense,” Lurie said. “And typically one of the great things about professional football is that defenses adjust to offenses and offenses adjust to defenses every year. When we won the Super Bowl a few years ago, we really banked on the RPOs and were very, very successful. It didn’t take long for defenses to adapt to the RPOs, and if you notice, we weren’t as successful and we stopped using it nearly as much. As the passing game becomes more explosive, you see more styles of defense to prevent explosive plays that open up the running game.”
Coming up with new approaches and counters to those approaches is part of the fabric of the game.
“It’s part of what I think I personally, and I think most of us love about football, is it’s a chess match,” Lurie said. “Let the chess match play out, and if for any reason it does get banned, we will try to be the very best at short yardage situations. We’ve got a lot of ideas there, but I think it’s a credit to using our personnel in a way. There aren’t that many teams that have 600-pound squat quarterbacks and that offensive line. Listen, if there were any injury concern, I would be concerned.”
For now, he’s not buying the idea that the play has a heightened injury risk.
“I want to know what data there is,” Lurie said. “I don’t think there is any. If you want to say that it could be, it’s hard to make rules on could be’s and should be’s. The quarterback sneak is one of the reasons we like using the tush push, we think it’s a safer play than the quarterback sneak. . . . The quarterback sneak, if you talk to quarterbacks about it, there’s more spearing going on. They’re less protected by players around them. One of the reasons we got motivated to develop an expertise in this play is it was more protective to the quarterback.
“It’s ironic that people would bring up health and safety. We’re at the top of the game in terms of wanting health and safety on every play. We voted for hip drop tackle and defenseless receiver. We will always, always support what is safer for the players. It’s a no-brainer. If this is proven to be less safe for the players, we will be against the tush push. But until that’s the case, to me, there’d be no reason to ban this play.”
Then there’s the concern that it doesn’t look like football.
“You know what?” Lurie said. “I remember reading about the forward pass, and they said it really was an odd play that is no part of American football. It was controversial when the forward pass came out. I think aestheticism is very subjective. I’ve never judged whether a play looks OK. Does a screen pass look better than an in-route or an out-route? I don’t know. To me, it’s not a very relevant critique that it doesn’t look right or something like that. I don’t know what looks right. Scoring. We like to win and score.”
Ultimately, it comes down to whether 24 or more owners are willing to eliminate the ability to push a ballcarrier. Whatever they do, they should make a final decision and stick with it. It’s not good for anyone to have the question linger.
Everyone knows what the play is. Everyone knows how it came to be. Keep it or get rid of it. Make a decision, and stick to it.
The NFL did not ban the tush push at the league meeting today, but it might soon ban all plays in which players get pushed and pulled by other players.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said a broader discussion will take place on making it illegal to push players, and more strictly enforcing the existing rule against pulling players, before the next league meeting.
“I think that makes a lot of sense in many ways because that expands it beyond that single play,” Goodell said. “There are a lot of plays where you see people pushing or pulling somebody that are not in the tush push formation that I think do have an increased risk of injury. So I think the Committee will look at that and come back in May with some proposals.”
A broader rule change that applies to other plays may be more palatable because it wouldn’t seem like singling out the Eagles just because they do the tush push so much better than any other team. But it would still be bad news for the Eagles if a broader rule takes the tush push out of the NFL.
Owners discussed the tush push play for more than half an hour Tuesday, the chairman of the Competition Committee, Rich McKay, said. In the end, the vote was tabled until the May meetings.
The Packers, who presented the proposal seeking to ban the tush push, want the committee to consider banning pushing or pulling of any player on any play.
“A lot of discussion about [the tush push]. A lot teams have a lot of views,” McKay said. “You never like any discussion in any room to be projected toward a team or two. It’s never something we like doing. In this case, I think the discussion became No. 1 safety; No. 2 should you have to defend it; No. 3 is this part of the history of football. All those kind of discussions happened. I think we evolved to the idea that, up to 2004, we had rules in place that prohibited pushing and pulling. Just prohibited it. We deleted that from the rulebook, because it became harder for officials to officiate it downfield. So, that got deleted. From that came a play like this, a formation like this. So, I think the idea was, Listen, as opposed to voting on this proposal today, Green Bay asked could you go back and talk about reintroducing the 2004 language, study it, understand it and talk about it again when we get back to May.”
This is the third offseason that the Competition Committee has reviewed the play, but the first time a club has submitted a rules proposal aimed at eliminating or restricting it.
McKay admitted there are no current safety concerns with the play, though Bills coach Sean McDermott cited health and safety as the reason he wanted a ban. No player has been seriously injured on the play, and McKay said not enough data exists regarding the health and safety of the play.
“A lot of people are concerned with what may be [with potential injuries in the future],” McKay said.
Instead of banning one play, used mostly by one team, the Competition Committee now will begin researching whether to outlaw pushing and pulling on both sides of the ball. Currently, as McKay pointed out, the offense is allowed to push, something defensive players are prohibited from doing.
The Eagles and Bills have scored a touchdown or achieved a first down on 87 percent of their attempts using the play.
The tush push has not been banned. At least not yet.
The 32 teams decided not to take a vote today at the league meeting on a proposal brought forward by the Packers that would have outlawed pushing the quarterback immediately after he takes the snap on quarterback sneaks.
Although any rule change applies to all 32 teams, this change was obviously a response to the Eagles, who have been very successful in short-yardage situations by having Jalen Hurts take the snap, plunge into the line and get pushed from behind by teammates.
There’s been significant debate within the NFL about whether it’s fair to target a play just because one team does it so much better than the others, and also whether the play leads to more injuries than other plays.
That debate will continue, and a vote is likely to be taken on a tush push ban when owners get together in May.
The Eagles have parted ways with a number of players since winning the Super Bowl and one key part of the offense’s future is still unsettled.
Tight end Dallas Goedert is heading into the final year of his contract and that’s led to some chatter about a possible trade. General Manager Howie Roseman said there’s “no update” to share on Goedert’s status on Monday and head coach Nick Sirianni stopped well short of committing to a future with Goedert when he spoke to reporters on Tuesday.
“Right now he’s on our football team,” Sirianni said, via Jeff McLane of the Philadelphia Inquirer. “And obviously, Dallas Goedert has meant a lot to us. We’ll see how that plays out. He’s a heck of a football player, heck of a leader. Want to be able to have back as many guys as you possibly can, but that’s not the reality of the NFL. We’ll see what happens and how that happens, but of course you want everyone back.”
Grant Calcaterra remains on the roster and the Eagles have signed Harrison Bryant and Kylen Granson as free agents.
Goedert is set to have a cap number of just over $11.8 million, but the Eagles would not see any cap savings with a trade unless it happens after June 1. That may mean Goedert’s future remains uncertain for a while.
The question of whether or not to ban the tush push has been a dominant topic at the league meetings in Palm Beach this week and the Packers touched off the conversation by proposing the ban earlier this year.
Packers head coach Matt LaFleur got his chance to weigh in during a session with reporters on Tuesday morning. LaFleur said he wasn’t involved in the drafting of the proposal, but expressed his support for it and said “player safety should be at the forefront” of the league’s decisions.
“When you look at the play, I would say I don’t think it’s a great football play,” LaFleur said, via Matt Schneidman of TheAthletic.com. “It’s more of a rugby play. Some of the injury concerns, we want to just kinda get out in front of that and be a little bit more proactive.”
If there is a vote by team owners on the proposal, it will come after further discussion on Tuesday. The league could also table the question for the time being and have further discussions in the future about a play that’s sparked a lot of different opinions.
