On Tuesday, the NFL voted to table a proposal from the Green Bay Packers to ban the “Tush Push,” the favorite short-yardage play of the Philadelphia Eagles, where a tight end and running back push the quarterback over the center to pick up vital 3rd and 4th down conversions.
But was Commissioner Goodell’s tabling of that proposal part of a larger strategy to ban the play later?
It now appears that could be the case.
According to Kalyn Kahler of ESPN.com, 16 teams supported the Packers’ proposal to ban the tush push. While significant, that vote total falls well short of the 24 needed to pass the measure.
However, the reason Green Bay’s proposal didn’t get the full 24 votes may be the wording of the rule itself. As Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer reports, coaches raised issues with the Packers’ very “narrow” approach to crafting the proposal.
“…both New England Patriots coach Mike Vrabel and Los Angeles Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh raised problems with the rule’s definition of the play, as pushing behind the center,” Breer wrote. “Vrabel asked whether the quarterback could be pushed behind the guard. Harbaugh asked whether the guards could be pushed by extra linemen on the field to create a similar effect to the quarterback being pushed.”
Some raised other issues about uneasiness over banning a play just because another team had found a way to use it so effectively. It was then that the league stepped in to salvage what increasingly looked like a failed proposal from the Packers. Competition Committee Chairman Rich McKay, a close ally of Goodell, stepped in and asked the teams whether they would be open to taking a “closer look at how the rule was written in 2004, before a ban of pushing or pulling a teammate was repealed, and then double back on the topic in May. Somewhere around 20 teams were in favor of doing that.”
Breer writes that McKay’s deft maneuver has given the league six weeks to work behind the scenes, drumming up support for the tush push ban.
Which makes sense, right?
If the league didn’t want or care if the tush push got banned, they would have let the proposal die on the vine at Tuesday’s meetings. The fact that they didn’t and bought themselves some time suggests they want to see the play banned.
In addition, Goodell himself opened up another avenue for overturning the play by broadening the proposal to include a ban on all “pushing and pulling.”
“I think that makes a lot of sense in many ways because that expands it beyond that single play,” Goodell said. “There are a lot of plays where you see people pushing or pulling somebody that are not in the tush push formation that I think do have an increased risk of injury. So I think the Committee will look at that and come back in May with some proposals.”
You don’t get many more telegraphed responses than that. The commissioner wants the play eliminated.
However, by crafting it into a broader proposal to ban all pushing and pulling, he executes a nice political maneuver that doesn’t make the Eagles feel specifically targeted.
In short, there’s a high likelihood the league bans the tush push in May.
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