Unidentified NFL team proposes tush push ban
An NFL team has submitted a rule proposal to ban the "tush push" quarterback sneak, Troy Vincent, the NFL's executive vice president of football operations, told reporters at the scouting combine Monday.
Vincent did not identify the team that made the proposal when he made his comments -- during a break in meetings between the NFL officials and the competition committee -- to The Washington Post and NFL Network.
NFL owners could vote on the proposal next month at the annual league meeting in Palm Beach, Florida, unless the team decides to withdraw its proposal. If the proposal goes to a vote, 24 of the NFL's 32 owners would have to vote in favor for it to pass. Teams submit rule proposals each year, and those, along with proposals submitted by the competition committee, are then put up for vote by the owners.
"We do have a club playing-rule proposal around the tush push," Vincent said, according to the Post. "It's the way they deemed it, the tush push. ... It's on our agenda. The club proposal is, 'We need to make some adjustments to that. Is that a viable football play?'"
The play has been examined by the NFL and the competition committee in previous offseasons, but no action has been taken.
The Philadelphia Eagles and Buffalo Bills have combined to run 163 tush pushes, in which a team lines up one or more players behind the quarterback to push him forward against the defense, the past three seasons -- more than the rest of the NFL combined, according to ESPN Research.
The Eagles and Bills have scored a touchdown or achieved a first down on 87% of their attempts using the play, while the rest of the NFL has been successful on just 71%, per ESPN Research.
Despite his team's success with the play, Bills coach Sean McDermott shared his reservations about the safety of it during his combine availability Monday.
"To me, there's always been an injury risk with that play, and I've expressed that opinion for the last couple of years or so when it really started to come into play the way it's being used, especially a year ago," McDermott, who is a member of the competition committee, said. "So, I just feel like, player safety, and the health and safety of our players has to be at the top of our game, which it is. It's just that play to me has always been ... or the way that the techniques that are used with that play, to me have been potentially contrary to the health and safety of the players. And so again, you have to go back though in fairness to the injury data on the play, but I just think the optics of it, I'm not in love with."
Asked by ESPN how he balances running the play while also prioritizing player safety, McDermott said, "We do it a little bit different than other teams. One team in particular, who does it a certain way, that's the one that is really, there's just so much force behind that player, but yeah, you try and keep ... not try, you make No. 1 always everything we do, fundamentals, what we teach technique, in this case, what we ask our players to do, health and safety No. 1."
Jalen Hurts and the Eagles, whose QB sneak play has been dubbed the "Brotherly Shove," scored their first touchdown in Super Bowl LIX using the play.
And in the NFC Championship Game, Washington Commanders linebacker Frankie Luvu twice was flagged for an offsides penalty after jumping over the Eagles' line to try to stop the play, prompting referee Shawn Hochuli to announce that he would award Philadelphia a touchdown if Luvu was flagged a third time.
In New Orleans, before the Super Bowl, Eagles coach Nick Sirianni noted that "the success that we have is not replicated always throughout the entire league" and added, "I'm lobbying to never change that rule just because we're successful at it."
"Hip drop and the tush push were in the same conversation three years ago," Vincent said, according to NFL Network. "A year ago, we felt like, let's just focus in on the hip-drop tackle, and the tush push, just say, 'hey, the Philadelphia Eagles, they just do it better than everybody else.' But there are some concerns. Our health and safety committee has laid that out today with a brief conversation on the injury report. There's some challenges, some concerns that they'll share with the broader group tomorrow. But the tush push will become a topic of discussion moving into March."
ESPN's Alaina Getzenberg contributed to this report.