One NFL team isn't feeling the brotherly love about the brotherly shove.
Days before one of the league's biggest calendar days, the Scouting Combine, the NFL's executive vice president of football operations Troy Vincent said that one team has proposed a ban of the tush push, the quarterback sneak play made popular—and ran nearly to perfection—by the Philadelphia Eagles, according to Judy Battista of NFL Network.
The team has chosen to remain anonymous. Powered by one of the league's biggest and strongest offensive lines and a quarterback in Jalen Hurts capable of squatting roughly 600 pounds, the Eagles have, since the 2022 season, successfully dialed up the QB sneak—or tush push as it has been nicknamed—to unbelievable success in short yardage situations.
The play looks similarly to any other QB sneak, except the tight end joins the halfback in the backfield, and the two, in this year's case Saquon Barkley and Dallas Goedert, combine to push Hurts's rear as the offensive line bulldozes forward. The play has been likened to a rugby scrum, which has raised concern about its safety and place in the game. Plus, the Eagles' clockwork-like ability to generate first downs and touchdowns out of the set has been deemed an unfair competitive advantage by some.
Entering the '24 season, Philadelphia had run the play to a robust 86 percent success rate in the past two seasons, compared to the league average of 76 percent.
As such, chatter about modifying the rules, or perhaps even a ban, of the play emerged, especially back in '23 when a report emerged that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell himself wanted the play banned. But Goodell in December of '23 refuted that notion.
It still didn't stop the conversation from continuing on throughout the '24 season and offseason, where Vincent, in March of '24 stated that there would be no proposals to ban the play and that it would remain legal throughout the season.
That step has, however, been taken this offseason. And while it's not clear which team proposed the ban or even modification of the rules surrounding the play, one team made their feelings clear about the tush push earlier in February.
Green Bay Packers team president Mark Murphy, in a monthly Q&A on the team's website, said he was "not a fan of the play" and wanted to see the pushing of the runner "prohibited."
Should such a proposal come to a vote involving the league owners, there would need to be 24 votes in favor of a rule change for action to be taken.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as NFL Executive Says One Team Is Proposing Ban to Eagles' Tush Push Play.
