The debate over the Eagles’ signature play isn’t going away.
NFL defenses can’t stop the Philadelphia Eagles’ Tush Push. So NFL team owners will keep trying.
There has been another attempt to get the league to change the rules regarding the quarterback sneak, which the Eagles have run to extreme success and other teams haven’t been able to do as well. NFL executive vice president of football operations Troy Vincent said a team has proposed modifying the rules of the play, via Mark Maske of the Washington Post.
The team proposing the change was unnamed by Vincent.
Green Bay Packers president Mark Murphy has let it be known that he is very much against the play, complaining recently that it is “almost an automatic first down on plays of a yard or less” and citing the Washington Commanders’ comical repeated attempts to stop the play in the NFC championship game.
The Packers lost to the Eagles in the wild-card round of the NFL playoffs.
The play has become a huge weapon for the Eagles, who used it to score the first touchdown of their win in Super Bowl LIX earlier this month. They line up in a bunched formation, with teammates lined up right behind Hurts, and when the ball is snapped they are almost always able to surge ahead for a yard or two with Eagles pushing Hurts from behind. Other teams have had some success with the play, but the Eagles still convert at a far better rate than anyone else.
There was a debate about the play last offseason but it never came to a vote. The league’s franchise owners would have to vote to change the rules with the play in March, Maske reported.
It seems like sour grapes among teams that can’t stop a very successful play by the NFL’s reigning champions. But the conversation about trying to get the play banned, or at least changed in a major way, isn’t going away.
