EAGAN, Minn. — NFL owners, by a wide margin, wanted to ban the “tush push” Wednesday at the league’s spring meetings.
So did the NFL’s health and safety committee and competition committee.
But even the backing of those two groups and 22 owners wasn’t enough to remove the short-yardage play, which has been perfected by the Eagles in recent years. The Packers’ proposal to ban the “tush push” fell two votes shy of the 24 required for approval Wednesday.
The Raiders were one of the 22 teams that voted to ban the play. The 10 teams that voted against the ban were the Eagles, Browns, Ravens, Lions, Jaguars, Dolphins, Patriots, Saints, Jets and Titans.
“This is not a majority vote,” said Rich McKay, the NFL’s competition committee chairperson. “This one was unanimously proposed by the competition committee, this was unanimously proposed by the player health and safety committee and by the owner health and safety committee. So, there was a lot of support for it. A lot of discussion about it. Still takes 24 votes. In this case, the votes were not there, so the rule will stay as it is.”
That vote means the “tush push” lives on for at least one more season. How long it stays remains to be seen.
“I don’t look at it as the tush push play, I look at it as the pushing and the pulling,” said Cowboys co-owner Stephen Jones, whose club voted for the rule change. “You either want that or you don’t want it. And 10 teams obviously don’t mind it, and I respect their opinion. That’s why we have governance.”
Former Eagles center Jason Kelce, now retired, played a role in staving off the ban. He walked owners through the play Wednesday and tried to dispel the notion it was dangerous.
Kelce, of course, was at the heart of the play for years. Philadelphia has scored 27 touchdowns and converted 92 first downs with the “tush push” since 2022.
Kelce declined to speak to reporters after the vote Wednesday. But his breakdown was enough to keep clubs from prohibiting any offensive player from pushing or pulling a runner at any time.
“In his mind, he felt it was a safe play,” Jones said. “He never felt like it was a problem for him or that he was more apt to get hurt running that play versus other plays. That was his main point.”
Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie, who spoke to his fellow owners before the vote, said he was “pleased” with the outcome.
Playoff seeding stays the same
Wednesday started with the Lions withdrawing their proposal to overhaul the way the NFL seeds teams for the playoffs.
The league currently makes the four division winners in each conference the top four seeds. Detroit wanted to change that so a wild-card team with a better record than a division winner would get home-field advantage in the first round.
Raiders owner Mark Davis was against the proposal. He believed it could penalize teams that play in a stacked division, while a second-place team in a weaker division could have a better record simply because it played easier opponents.
Many of Davis’ colleagues agreed. The proposal didn’t even make it to a vote.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said Wednesday that owners could still consider a different seeding format in the future.
“I think they are interested potentially in looking at some type of reseeding,” Goodell said.
Onside kick tweak
NFL owners, after recently voting to make the “dynamic kickoff” that debuted last season permanent, approved a change to the onside kick Wednesday.
Teams can now declare an onside kick at any point if they’re trailing. Previously, they could only do so in the fourth quarter under the new kickoff rules.
Onside kicks will also now be set up at the 34-yard line, with players allowed to line up at the 35. The league hopes the tweaks will improve the play’s success rate, which was 6 percent last year.
Contact Vincent Bonsignore at [email protected]. Follow @VinnyBonsignore on X.
