Former Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce has joined the chorus of voices pushing back on the proposed tush push ban, a suggestion reportedly put forward by the Green Bay Packers to eliminate the Eagles' version of the quarterback sneak.
During an episode of his New Heights podcast released Wednesday, Kelce said he would want to ban the play too if his team "sucked at it and it wasn't a mechanical advantage," but later likened the idea of banning something one team is good at to, say, stopping running back Saquon Barkley from taking off just because he is the league's best RB.
Kelce also took issue with people say the tush push is more of a rugby play than a football play.
"I don't know what's more of a football play, I really don't," he said. "What represents football? Physicality, toughness, will. We're going to fight for half a yard. You know what's coming, we know what's coming. We're just going to bulldoze against each other like machines made of meat. It's like completely about football."
As for concerns that the play is dangerous, something echoed by Buffalo Bills coach Sean McDermott, Kelce said that, in his experience, it is not a play that significantly increased the chance of injury.
"Do guys get hurt on it sometimes, yes, but so does every other play that you run in the NFL," the 37-year-old explained. "Typically it's more of a grueling play. The plays where you get hurt are usually these high-impact collisions or somebody gets landed up on wrong or twisted, and that just doesn't happen much on that play because everybody's just nose-diving forward, trying to get as low as possible and push for a yard."
And finally, Kelce's argument to the complaint that the play is unfair is that, well, the defense can "push, too."
"It doesn't feel like teams across the league are as good as the Eagles are at it, so it feels weird to try and ban this play for an advantage that it seems like really just one team majorly has, in my opinion," the former center went on. "Like if it's an unfair advantage, do we ban Saquon Barkley from running with the football because that seems like an unfair advantage to me, you know what I mean?"
Watch those comments below, starting at 41:00.
Kelce's remarks are similar to those made by Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni, who previously said he finds the ban proposal a bit "insulting" and likened it to limiting Steph Curry to shooting threes in the fourth quarter.
And there is indeed a degree of ridiculousness to the conversation. If it's really an injury thing, and the evidence is there, maybe the discussion is worth having. But otherwise, it's a bit ludicrous to ban a play just because opposing teams can't figure out how to stop it.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Former Eagles Star Jason Kelce Says Proposal to Ban Tush Push 'Feels Weird'.
