In the final equation, there just wasn’t enough pushback.
NFL owners decided Wednesday that the so-called “Tush Push” play that’s been used to such great effect in recent years by the Philadelphia Eagles, who most recently employed it in their Super Bowl 59 rollover of the Kansas City Chiefs, will remain legal. Despite the latest, well, push from several corners of the league to outlaw the play – or at least reinstate a rule that was dropped two decades ago – the effort was once again staved off, barely failing to secure the required 75% of ownership votes required.
So after years of study by the league’s competition committee, input from coaches and a vote tabled as recently as two months ago, the Tush Push lives on … for at least another season – which means it’s time to declare winners and losers of this verdict:
WINNERS
Philadelphia Eagles
Hall of Famers Salt-N-Pepa said it best – “push it real good” – and Philly’s offense surely has complied. According to the NFL’s Next Gen Stats, the Eagles converted 28 of 34 Tush Push attempts (82%) last season before using it on the 1-yard line to score the first touchdown of Super Bowl 59, a game Philadelphia never trailed. The Eagles also repeatedly resorted to their signature surge, which is typically used in goal-line and short-yardage situations, to bludgeon the Washington Commanders 55-23 in the NFC championship game – left tackle Jordan Mailata declaring victory in his team’s patented brand of ‘mental warfare.’ Philadelphia began Tush Pushing with regularity in 2022 and has reached the Super Bowl in two of the past three seasons. The Eagles are obviously adept at it, have a daunting offensive line that averaged 6-6 and 338 pounds last season – the largest unit ever fielded on Super Sunday – and a quarterback, Jalen Hurts, who knows how to use his explosively strong legs to burrow behind all that humanity … while often getting propelled himself by teammates. It should remain a competitive advantage the team enjoys. Until the league says otherwise.
POWER RANKINGS: Field still chasing Philly
Jalen Hurts’ fantasy owners
Sorry, Tom Brady, Hurts has become the greatest short-yardage quarterback in NFL history. Since 2022, he has rushed for 42 touchdowns in the regular season – two-thirds of those (or 28) from the 1-yard line, including 11 from that distance in each of the past two campaigns. (In 10 career playoff games, Hurts has run for 10 TDs – four in Super Bowls – matching his total through the air.) Over that same period, Philadelphia has consistently been at or near the top of the league in converting third and fourth downs, never executing worse than 41% on third down or 68% on fourth. Hurts may never be the league MVP given his relative inconsistency as a passer, but he’s now got a Super Bowl MVP award in his trophy case … and just might be the key to countless fantasy championships.
Kevin Patullo
Meet Philadelphia’s new offensive coordinator, who replaced Kellen Moore, now the head coach of the New Orleans Saints. Pretty nice for Patullo, 43, a first-time OC two decades into his coaching career, that a bread-and-butter component of this team’s attack remains at his disposal for the immediate future. And it should also be noted that the play enables the Eagles to mix in shot plays during third-and-short scenarios – sometimes out of the Tush Push formation – with the relative security that if a deep strike gambit fails, a fresh set of downs will very likely be earned on the subsequent snap.
Jason Kelce
Whether or not the Eagles’ legendary – if former – center was instrumental in the stay of execution for the Tush Push, he was present as the owners convened Wednesday morning after vowing to clarify his stance on the merits and safety of the play, which he obviously supports. Regardless, Kelce gets to look like the closer … and also doesn’t have to wind up at the bottom of a pile with 1,000 pounds or more on top of him.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
While the Tush Push vote took up all the oxygen at this week’s ownership confab, the only NFC team to beat the Eagles in the past three postseasons quietly benefited from the Detroit Lions’ tabling of their proposal to seed the playoffs by overall record, irrespective of who wins each division. Despite going 27-24 in the regular season since 2022, the Bucs have won the NFC South thrice – and played at home in the playoffs each of those seasons. Under Detroit’s plan, Tampa Bay would not have never been seeded higher than sixth during that span.
The world?
As the NFL continues expanding its international footprint – it will stage a record seven regular-season games across five countries this season (including Spain and Ireland for the first time) – it retains what some contend is a rugby-style play in its collective arsenal. And, hey, folks in Europe and many other countries fancy rugby far more than American football, so why not give them something to glom onto? And don’t forget, the league is holding a regular-season game for the first time next year in Oceania – specifically Australia – where rugby is massive. Maybe that keeps the Tush Push off death row until at least 2027.
LOSERS
Green Bay Packers
If this had been a Congressional bill, then the Pack would have been cast as the (Democratic?) sponsors – whether because they truly abhor the Tush Push, have been fairly inept at executing their own version of it, and/or simply don’t have an owner who looks like the bad guy for targeting a signature aspect of Philadelphia’s recent success. Regardless, the Packers, who modified the language of the proposed rule change as recently as Monday – attempting to pave a runway for the league to restore a measure which prevented players from pushing and pulling their teammates to advance the ball that had existed in the rulebook up until 2005 – couldn’t get the votes for their “constituents,” falling two shy of adoption, according to multiple reports.
Saquon Barkley’s fantasy owners
“Losers.” Right. If the league’s best back and reigning rushing champion winds up on your fantasy roster this fall, then you’ll doubtless be thrilled. But how much more thrilled would you be if his quarterback wasn’t leading the Eagles in rushing touchdowns, which very likely wouldn’t have been the case had the Tush Push been banned?
NFL head coaches and coordinators
The NFL is infamous for being a copycat league – assuming you can copy the cat. That really hasn’t happened much when it comes to other teams’ ability to replicate the Tush Push or certainly stop it.
“You know, you hate to be against it because people are innovative. You want to respect that. And so there’s certainly been some teams that have been more innovative than the rest of us,” longtime Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said at the league meeting in March.
Added rookie New York Jets head coach Aaron Glenn, formerly the Lions’ defensive coordinator: “They’ve done a good job creating a play that’s unstoppable.” He added, “In my defensive coaching mentality, my job is to stop that play. Our job is to stop that play.”
Be better in that department, fellas … if you want to be better than Philly.
Cam Jurgen and Landon Dickerson
With Kelce retired for a year, this duo carries on as Philadelphia’s best interior battering rams, er, offensive linemen. And, while it may be coincidental, don’t forget that Jurgens, now the starting center, and Dickerson, who plays left guard, each managed to play just one half apiece in the NFC title game earlier this year. Both Pro Bowlers needed surgery this offseason, Jurgens suffering from a bad back while Dickerson needed his knee repaired. But they’ll again be hurtling into defensive walls soon enough.
Player safety?
Though Jurgens’ and Dickerson’s situations may or may not be cautionary, there’s no data to support that the Tush Push is a play fraught with injurious risk even if it’s been widely cited as a preemptive reason to get rid of it. The Eagles, unsurprisingly, unfailingly vouch for its safety, reporting no Tush Push injuries in practice or on game days.
“I think for everybody, including myself especially, health and safety is the most important thing when evaluating any play,” owner Jeffrey Lurie said at the NFL meetings earlier this spring, via the Athletic. “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.”
However, per reports, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell wanted the Tush Push axed after years of publicly prioritizing the health and well-being of the league’s players in an inherently violent sport. Time will tell if the injury concerns prove prophetic or unfounded.
Super Bowl aspirants
Wednesday’s news wasn’t good for the Packers, Commanders or Chiefs, who all got steamrolled by Philadelphia in last season’s playoffs. Aside from the Eagles, the Buffalo Bills use a version of the Tush Push more than any other club in the league – but even they have essentially come out against it, coach Sean McDermott among those with misgivings about its safety (which is also convenient when your team can’t successfully leverage the play to secure a victory at Arrowhead Stadium with a Super Bowl berth on the line). The league’s 31 non-champions aren’t necessarily playing for second in 2025, but they’re certainly no closer to knocking the Eagles off their Lombardi perch.