When NFL owners gather next week in Phoenix for their annual meeting, they’ll deliberate several rule proposals presented by the competition committee and other teams, but banning the tush push won’t be among them.
The rugby-style scrum play introduced to the league by the Philadelphia Eagles, who also executed it more effectively than any other team, has in recent years caused as much angst in the minds of football purists in league circles as it had for defensive coordinators searching for improved strategies to thwart the play. However, the NFL on Tuesday released the list of rule proposals that owners will vote on, and there was no mention of the tush push. Rich McKay, the co-chairman of the league’s Competition Committee, confirmed Wednesday that the play will go unscathed for another season.
“I don’t know that was the end of the debate, because I think there’s still people that are concerned with the whole pushing element,” McKay said during a call with reporters on Wednesday. “But I would say to you that, just like last year, I told you, you know, there was no competition committee (proposal to ban) the tush push. There was no proposal the year before on that. And over the years, we’ve now seen that, you know, the tush push, or is going down; the percentage of, I should say, the number of plays it’s being used, are going down. The success rate on the traditional sneak is now above the tush push success rate. So I just think it’s, there’s less talk about it within the football community. And there was no proposal on the table to put anything in this year to deal with that.”
Bothered by the play’s pushing-and-pulling element, opponents previously sought to outlaw the tush push. Last March, owners and teams discussed a potential ban of the play, and that debate resumed in May when owners held their spring meeting. However, the ban fell well short of the required 24 votes and the play lived on.
There was some expectation that a modified proposal to ban open-field pushing and pulling would be revisited to halt the play, but that never happened. Officials were instructed to blow their whistles more promptly to enforce when a ball-carrier’s forward progress had been stopped. They have also been instructed to more vigilantly enforce any false starts by offensive linemen seeking an edge in the blocking of the short-yardage play.
The owners will instead discuss a variety of other rules, including modifications to the kickoff receiving team’s alignment, the use of on-sides kicks throughout games and not just in late-game situations, allowing league personnel to consult with on-field officials when considering ejections for flagrant fouls and non-football acts and allowing the command center to correct obvious misses made by on-field officials if the NFL can’t finalize a labor deal with the referees union this offseason and has to use replacement officials in the fall.