The ‘tush push’ lives on. NFL teams vote to keep the controversial play

The “tush push” is here to stay.

An effort to ban the controversial football play failed to get enough votes among the NFL teams gathered in Minneapolis Wednesday, with the Philadelphia Eagles among the first to announce the news with a two-word post to X: “Push On.”

A proposal by the Green Bay Packers earlier this year would have barred any player who receives the snap from being pushed forward by one or more of his teammates. NFL owners tabled the proposal during a meeting in April.

But this week the Packers submitted an updated and more far-reaching proposal, which would prohibit offensive players from pushing or pulling a runner “in any direction or at any time” or lifting him “to his feet,” according to an article on NFL.com. That hews closer to former NFL rules, the article said.

The proposal lists “player safety” as one reason for the rule change, though no teams have shown evidence that the play is unsafe, according to the article. The proposal also lists “pace of play” as another basis for the plan.

Green Bay Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst told reporters in March that he supported banning the play, even though his team had run a version of it in the past. “I think this is something that needs to be discussed and we need to be proactive about it rather than reactive,” he said.

The effort to ban the play has faced pushback from teams that regularly employ it, perhaps none more successfully than the Philadelphia Eagles. The squad’s high-profile use of the move has led to its other moniker: the Brotherly Shove.

Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni rejected the argument that the tush push leads to automatic yardage gains, instead saying that the team’s success with the play comes from the fact that they work on it.

“I can’t tell you how many times we practiced the snap, we practiced the play, because it’s not a play that’s easy to practice. There’s different ways we figured out how to practice it,” Sirianni said during a press conference earlier this year. “It’s a little insulting to say we’re good at it, so it’s automatic. We work really hard at it.”

The Eagles defeated the Kansas City Chiefs 40 to 22 in this year’s Super Bowl.