Everyone knew that the Eagles were one of the 10 votes against the Packers’ proposal to ban the tush push on Wednesday and the identity of some of the other teams that joined them has come to light.
According to multiple reports, the Ravens, Patriots, Jets, and Lions also voted against the ban.
None of those votes should come as a surprise to those who have followed the discourse around the proposal over the last few months. Ravens head coach John Harbaugh called it a football play and Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel said you can’t ban a play for being hard to defend. Lions head coach Dan Campbell said it’s up to other teams to stop the offense and Jets head coach Aaron Glenn, who was Campbell’s defensive coordinator the last few seasons, shared a similar view.
Campbell will get his chance against the Eagles in Week 11 while the Packers will be hosting the team they targeted with their proposal the previous week.
The tush push will remain legal for the 2025 NFL season.
In a vote of owners today, the Packers’ proposal to ban the pushing of ball carriers was voted down. The proposal got 22 yes votes and 10 no votes. NFL rule changes need at least 24 yes votes, a three-fourths majority, to pass.
The specific rule change would have banned all pushing of all ball carriers, restoring a rule that had been in effect for most of NFL history. But while the rule would have been broad, it was clearly aimed specifically at the Eagles, who have successfully used the tush push in recent years to make first downs almost automatic when they have only a yard to gain.
Despite some arguments that the tush push is dangerous and banning it is needed for player safety, the Eagles argued that there’s no data showing it’s any more dangerous than any other play.
Ultimately, the Eagles convinced nine other teams that a ban was unnecessary. And so the tush push will remain. For at least another year.
One of the more disingenuous arguments being pushed by the anti-tush push crowd is the notion that, despite the absence of injury data to prove the play isn’t safe, it could be a safety issue.
Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie has turned that argument on its head.
Via Dianna Russini of TheAthletic.com, Lurie has made the case for keeping the play directly to his peers at the ownership meeting in Minneapolis. Per the report, Lurie emphasized “the need to clean up the process, not the play itself.”
Lurie also reportedly said this: “Whoever votes to ban this play is taking liability for putting risk on our quarterbacks.”
In other words, he’s saying that the safety risk comes not from having the play, but from not having it.
Of course, there’s no reason to think that not pushing a quarterback during the sneak makes a quarterback sneak more dangerous. But with those who want the play to go pushing the illogical idea that, despite the absence of data, the play is dangerous, it’s the perfect response.
Here’s the far better position. The Eagles, even without the pushing of the tush, will still run a largely unstoppable quarterback sneak. The change, then, is cosmetic.
Indeed, getting rid of the tush push could make the Eagles ever more determined to run the quarterback sneak early and often. Starting with (we hope) the first snap from scrimmage during the first game of the 2025 regular season.
Former Eagles center Jason Kelce has said he thinks his feelings about the tush push were misconstrued, and now he’s offering to talk to owners directly as they prepare to vote on a rule change designed to prevent Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts and other ball carriers from getting pushed by their teammates.
Kelce said on his New Heights podcast that he wanted to travel to the owners’ meeting in Minnesota so that he could explain that his comments about the tush push were in no way intended to suggest it’s a dangerous play or was a factor in his retirement.
“I’m actually going to Minnesota,” Kelce said. “There were some things said at the last owners’ meeting, some of the owners and coaches hinted that the reason I stopped playing was because of the tush push, and that I got hurt on the tush push frequently. I’m just going to answer any questions people have about my partaking in this play. I don’t care whether it gets banned or not. At the end of the day, this is why you vote on things, and if they vote to ban the tush push, the Eagles are still going to run a quarterback sneak at a very high percentage. I’m just going to offer, if anybody has any questions about the tush push, or whether I retired because of the tush push, I’ll tell you, I’ll come out of retirement today if you tell me, ‘All you gotta do is run 80 tush pushes to play in the NFL.’ I’ll do that gladly. It’ll be the easiest job in the world.”
We’ll find out today whether owners will listen to Kelce, or whether they’ll vote for a new rule that eliminates pushing ball carriers, and would change the Eagles’ signature play.
Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts is in his first offseason as a Super Bowl champion, but there’s still a familiar storyline to his preparation for the upcoming season.
Hurts is working with a new offensive coordinator for the fourth straight season after Kevin Patullo replaced Kellen Moore in the wake of Moore’s move to become the head coach of the Saints. Brian Johnson and Shane Steichen came before Moore and head coach Nick Sirianni said on Tuesday that he hasn’t seen any difference from Hurts in terms of how he’s approaching things.
“The same way he’s handled it every year,” Sirianni said, via a transcript from the team. “I think he’s a guy that just is going to — again, same thing, start right from the beginning again, working out like crazy again, getting ready again in the classroom, getting ready on the field.”
Patullo has been with the team since Sirianni took over in 2021, so the change is less extreme than it might have been in other cases. Whatever tweaks will be made, Hurts said that going through the process so many times has made him a better player because it gives him so many options about handling situations that come his way.
“You’re always in a place where you’re trying to improve and find that 1 percent,” Hurts said, via Jeff McLane of the Philadelphia Inquirer. “I think it’s unique to experience all the coaches I have — the [the offensive coordinators], the offensive leadership in the quarterback room — all those things have been positives for me because I’ve turned it into a positive. I’m able to lean on so many different things and decide when do I need it when it comes to going out there and performing and leading.”
The Eagles offense hasn’t always fired on all cylinders with Hurts, but his adaptability and productivity have helped Steichen and Moore graduate to top jobs. If things keep rolling in 2025, Patullo might be the next head coach to climb the ladder with help from the quarterback.
Eagles receiver A.J. Brown is very good at tackle football. And that’s good enough for him.
Meeting with reporters on Tuesday, Brown made it clear that he has no interest in pressing pause on his primary gig to play flag football in the Olympics.
“I heard the Olympics is during camp,” Brown said, via Zach Berman of allphly.com. “So, yeah, that would be tough. . . . That would be fun just to compete. Me personally, no, because of camp. [The media] would be complaining, ‘A.J. Brown is not in camp.’ So would the fans. So I’m going to keep the main thing the main thing.”
That’s going to be the biggest question for plenty of players. Are they willing to miss camp time (and possibly offseason workouts) to practice and play a very different type of football?
Ultimately, only 12 NFL players will be participating in the 2028 Olympics, with up to six alternates. The league, and USA Football, will have no problem finding enough players to volunteer to do it. Even if plenty of them, like Brown, won’t be interested in distracting themselves from the more important task at hand.
When it comes to player contracts, the system generates full and complete transparency. When it comes to head-coaching contracts, the media and fans know only what the team and the coach is willing to share.
Eagles coach Nick Sirianni is willing to share nothing at all about his new contract.
All that’s known is that: (1) he had one year left on his original contract; and (2) he signed a “multi-year” extension. So, at a minimum, he has a three-year contract.
Meeting with reporters on Tuesday, Sirianni declined to disclose anything about the deal. Starting with the fairly innocuous and obvious question of what does multi-year mean?
“I’m not going to get into the details of any of that stuff,” Sirianni said, via a transcript provided by the team.
When asked to explain his reason for complete discretion, Sirianni said, “I just won’t get into the details of any of that. Usually coach contracts are — you don’t get those [details] as much, right?”
He’s right. We don’t. Unless someone with knowledge of the deal blabs, we won’t.
The reality is that coaches, despite the existence of a salary cap, a franchise tag, or other devices to limit their pay, have not seen their salary rates increase at the same rate player pay and franchise revenues/equity have spiked. It reeks of collusion by teams that don’t want to get into a bidding war for coaches, and that don’t want to pay more than they have to pay. After all, every dollar that goes to coaches cuts directly into the profit margin.
And while the best coaches are doing very well, a great coach is far more valuable than a very good player. And very good players are currently making much more than the highest-paid coaches.
Wide receiver A.J. Brown wasn’t the only Eagles player to shrug at a question about the possible ban of the tush push on Tuesday.
There is expected to be a vote of team owners about the Packers’ revised proposal regarding the play at the league meetings on Wednesday. Approval of the proposal will take the vote of 24 teams and would reinstate the pre-2006 rule banning the pushing or pulling of a ballcarrier by their teammates.
Left tackle Jordan Mailata said “we’ll go without the push” if the proposal passes and that the team is more focused on what new offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo is installing than on what’s going on at league meetings.
“In terms of them banning the tush push, I hate that name so I hope they do ban it,” Mailata said at a press conference. “It’s a stupid name. But I can’t control it, we can’t control it, so we don’t even worry about it. Right now, we’re just installing our schemes, whatever KP is installing that day, that’s what we’re focused on because worrying about if they’re going to ban the tush push or not ain’t gonna win us a championship. What we do here every day here matters.”
Quaterback Jalen Hurts declined a chance to share his thoughts on the potential ban during his own press conference and head coach Nick Sirianni pointed to previous comments about it being “a little insulting” to ban a play that the Eagles are successful at because of how much time they spend practicing it.
When the Eagles recently visited the White House, at least a dozen players passed on the trip.
One player who stayed away was receiver A.J. Brown.
Meeting with reporters on Tuesday, Brown explained that his absence had nothing to do with politics, via Jeff McLane of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Brown said he had a “personal thing” to attend to.
Owner Jeffrey Lurie made it clear after the Super Bowl win that it’s a voluntary thing. Which didn’t realy need to be said; it’s never a mandatory exercise.
And plenty of players didn’t feel compelled to show up. Which is fine. They’re entitled to go, they’re entitled to stay away.
They can stay away for personal reasons. They can stay away for political reasons. They can stay away for any reason. They can stay away for no reason.
The reality for Brown and the Eagles is that there’s a pretty good chance they’ll be invited to go back against next year.
Wednesday may bring a vote on whether to adopt a rule change proposed by the Packers that would ban all pushing or pulling of ballcarriers.
That change would actually be a reversion to 2005, which was the final season when that was prohibited by the rule book, and the proposal is designed to put an end to the tush push quarterback sneak that the Eagles have perfected in recent seasons.
During a press conference on Tuesday, Eagles wide receiver A.J. Brown was asked about the potential change and said he didn’t have “any thoughts on it” before sharing one.
“It’s only one yard, so,” Brown said while shrugging.
Brown then laughed, so it doesn’t seem he’s going to spend much time worrying about what Wednesday may hold for a play that’s become a staple of the Eagles offense.
