The ‘tush push’ ban is a divisive issue, from the locked doors of the NFL’s owners’ meeting outside Minneapolis, Minnesota this week to the local watering hole to the school lunchroom.
What shouldn’t be up for debate are the false pretenses under which the proposal failed to receive sufficient support Wednesday. The attempt to shove – not unlike a goal-line effort from the Philadelphia Eagles, the masterminds of the play – the ban through under the guise of player safety was the real flag on the play.
Filed Monday, the revised proposal from the Green Bay Packers called for a 10-yard penalty should another player push or pull the ball carrier. The official reason? “Player safety. Pace of play.”
Using player safety as a prop to ban the tush push was always disingenuous. And it’s why I’m glad Jason Kelce, the retired Eagles center turned media personality, was on the scene Wednesday at the Omni Viking Lakes Hotel to presumably plead his case in support of the play.
I don’t know exactly what Kelce said to the assembled group of owners and executives. Maybe it had no effect, perhaps his words completely swayed the room. But here’s what he told a group of reporters in the Eagles’ locker room during the 2023 season (after the Eagles defeated the Miami Dolphins in prime time) about the play that became known as the “Brotherly Shove.”
“If you look across the league, it’s really not a high-injury play…I’d be interested to see what stats say about injuries on the play,” Kelce said. “It’s a very grueling play, but it’s so tight-quartered that it doesn’t allow for high impacts. So I don’t think that you’re going to see that many injuries on it.”
Kelce then knocked on the wooden panel in the locker behind him. The tush push isn’t without its bumps and bruises, Kelce said, with hands caught under bodies and ankles twisted. But at the height of the Eagles’ ‘tush push’ powers, he deeply believed the play wouldn’t lead to significant injuries.
“I think the reality is that (injuries) are happening throughout the game,” Kelce said. “But there’s a lot of weight in there. There’s people on top of you.”
Even Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie said he would support the ban if data showed the play wasn’t “very, very safe.”
“It’s a precision play … it’s very practiced. We devote a lot of resources to the tush push,” said Lurie, noting that Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts can squat 600 pounds.
He added: “If there were any injury concern, I’d be concerned.”
Thus far, no data from the league or teams has emerged publicly. Other than limited anecdotal evidence, there is none. And it’s why the player-safety angle of this all is a complete fallacy.
Is the league talking about player safety when these guys are playing three games in 11 days, as many teams do each season? Or travel across the Atlantic Ocean?
Let’s acknowledge that there have been injuries on this type of play. The New York Giants, actually, experienced two injuries – center John Michael Schmitz and tight end Daniel Bellinger – during their failed rendition in October 2023 against the Seattle Seahawks. The Kansas City Chiefs hardly run quarterback sneaks with Patrick Mahomes after he suffered a knee injury during Week 7 of the 2019 season.
All of those teams lacked the Eagles’ expertise up front.
“Nobody practices it on Wednesday at the tempo it’s going to be in the game,” Kelce said. “Because we’ve had so many reps in the past two years on that play, we have a better breadth of knowledge of how to hit the nuances and all work in the same direction. I think it adds up. It might not seem like a lot, but each time you run it, you gain ‘OK, this is what happened on that one. If I do this, I can do that.’”
Defenders flying over the line like the Washington Commanders’ Frankie Luvu did during the NFC championship game is more dangerous. The sideshow that ensued then is one of the clearest reasons why the play has garnered so much attention this offseason, and if it becomes that much of a distraction, then maybe some policing of the play is warranted.
But don’t do it in the name of player safety. And this week, NFL owners managed to stay above that level of hypocrisy.