Inside the NFL fight over the tush push ... and what's next

PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Monday at the NFL's annual league meeting began with the season review session, open to every club and league staffer in attendance, along with their guests. Commissioner Roger Goodell sat in the front row of a ballroom at Palm Beach's opulent Breakers hotel while NFL Network's Steve Wyche interviewed a panel of four Florida grade-schoolers, whose teacher was being honored after going viral for using NFL-inspired lessons in her curriculum.

Wyche asked the kids: What would you suggest to the NFL to make football more fun?

Eleven-year-old Chase, wearing a Ja'Marr Chase jersey to honor the Bengals star receiver and his own name, yelled into the microphone: "More tush pushes!"

The crowd erupted in laughter and cheers, and the Eagles contingent waved to the group. This push sneak-loving fifth grader was not a Philadelphia plant, but he made a strong point in dispelling any notion that this play isn't an entertaining television product.

Despite appearing in just 0.28% of total plays last season, the tush push took up more time in conversation in Tuesday's voting session than the rules proposal that altered the kickoff, a rule change that will affect 28 times more plays than push sneaks. The will they or won't they? surrounding the potential tush push prohibition was the biggest news of the annual league meeting. And it was so pressing that the proposal was the subject of the first question faced by Goodell at his meeting-ending news conference.

The conversation around Green Bay's proposal to institute a 10-yard penalty for immediately pushing the player who takes the snap was so back-and-forth that the proposal ultimately didn't make it to a formal vote and was tabled. Even the word "immediately" within the phrase "immediately at the snap" was a subject of debate.

"It's a layered conversation," said one NFL team source, whose club voted for Green Bay's proposal but also acknowledged that it didn't like that the rule had competitive implications that attacked one team's success -- Philadelphia's.

"If it's a competitive conversation, the Eagles just coach it better than the rest of us," Panthers head coach Dave Canales said. "So I don't want to take away a competitive advantage from the team that figured out how to have the quarterback sneak [be] so effective."

Two sources in Tuesday's voting session said clubs were split, with exactly 16 in favor of Green Bay's proposal, and that the Packers will rewrite the proposal to be broader and prohibit all pushing of the runner ahead of the next league meeting on May 20-21 in Minneapolis, in an effort to entice eight more clubs to vote for it to pass. The May proposal will likely look much different than the original, and it won't be as targeted to Philadelphia and Buffalo -- the only two teams that ran a push sneak more than five times last season.

"We spent so much time on this single play," said a source who was in the room for the sessions. "How many times did the pushing even make a difference last year? Once or twice, and the teams were less successful than they were on traditional sneaks. It was less about competitive edge than it was about health stuff. Why was this specific thing the most interesting?"

The battle over the tush push proposal underscored the importance of the way a rule is presented to earn a three-quarters NFL majority -- and what can happen when the motives behind a proposal are viewed with suspicion.

Player safety became what several sources called the prevailing argument for banning the play, and three sources with three different clubs told ESPN ahead of the vote the lack of injury data became the reason they didn't plan to support the proposal.

One general manager told ESPN on Monday that the proposal "feels like sour grapes" because the Packers lost twice to the Eagles in 2024 and the Eagles had become so successful at the play. "They're hiding behind player safety," he said.

And so the debate, and the work, continues.

"Usually, when there's proposals written up, you have people who don't like how they're written," Bills head coach and competition committee member Sean McDermott said. "Every last proposal I've been around. So the hard thing is, hey, why don't you just sit down and write the proposals if you have a better idea? So let's be solution-oriented. "

ESPN PREVIOUSLY REPORTED that during the football operations session with head coaches and general managers, Eagles GM Howie Roseman, assistant GM Jon Ferrari and two coaches on the competition committee, McDermott and the Rams' Sean McVay -- both in favor of getting rid of the push sneak -- were seen having a passionate conversation in a side hallway outside of the session.

"Sean [McDermott] and I have talked about this a little bit, just on the competition committee," McVay said. "Some of the pushback is about health and safety risks, and Howie made a great point about the fact that, hey, there's other plays, well, why is that any different than normal sneak, some of the short yardage and goal-line situations? I said, it's a very valid point, and then I did acknowledge the fact that I didn't like the optics [of the play], even though I know I sound like a hater, wanting it out, because you guys [the Eagles] do it better than anybody else. And they were telling me that I was a hater for that."

"You've got two or three passionate guys, coaches that, and in this case, Howie the GM, that are sharing their thoughts," McDermott said. "All three of us are about doing what's best for the game."

Meanwhile, Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni was working in concert with Roseman and Ferrari, saying he had been having conversations with "a couple people."

One of those people, Sirianni's former defensive coordinator and current Cardinals head coach Jonathan Gannon, said, "Nick knows where I stand." Former Eagles offensive coordinator and Saints head coach Kellen Moore, whose push sneak call in Super Bowl LIX might make him the last coach to call the play, said, "I got Nick['s back]. ... Other teams have tried it and haven't had as much success. Jalen [Hurts], the offensive line of Philly, they've been committed to it. And so it's an investment thing."

Colts head coach Shane Steichen, another former Sirianni coordinator, made his loyalty clear: "I'm not in favor of taking it out," he said. "It's been around for a long time, to be completely honest. Because when you're on the half-yard line, backed up and you got to run a QB sneak, people are usually back there pushing. [The Eagles] just brought it to the field of play a couple years ago."

Despite Philadelphia's advocacy in Palm Beach, half of the league was in favor of eliminating the play from the game.

Outgoing Packers president Mark Murphy presented the proposal Tuesday morning, and he told reporters afterward his No. 1 reason was player safety.

The league's chief medical officer, Dr. Allen Sills, made presentations to league staff, the competition committee and coaches and owners on the injury risk of the play at the scouting combine and the league meeting.

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Shannon Sharpe tired of talking about the tush push

Ryan Clark and Shannon Sharpe react to the decision by NFL owners to table the vote on banning the tush push.

"It's all about health and safety," one NFL owner told ESPN. "[Dr. Sills said], 'It's not if but when a catastrophic injury occurs.'"

"If that's the argument, the whole sport is a matter of 'if not when,'" one source in the sessions said. "That rubbed some people the right way, and some people the wrong way. When [Sills] said it at the combine meetings, I don't think it was intended to serve as the water carrier for Green Bay's proposal."

"Sills can speak for himself, but the angle of it and the nature and the makeup of the play really does lend itself [to injury]," Murphy told reporters. "The centers and the people right in the middle of it, you've got that much force on both sides. It is just a question; I think he is right."

Multiple sources told ESPN that Sills presented hypothetical injury data to clubs during sessions this week, based on projected modeling. The NFL declined to comment on Sills' presentation through a league spokesperson.

"Most of [the injury data] is subjective," said Moore, who called the play 39 times last season in Philadelphia. "I feel very comfortable with the league keeping it."

One club executive said he didn't like the play and doesn't think it should be in the game because it's not a football play, but he also didn't agree with the injury risk as the reason to ban it. He argued all pushing of ball carriers in the game should be banned, as it was in a previous iteration of the rulebook.

A source with direct knowledge of the competition committee's thinking said before the voting session Tuesday that clubs had to take the injury conversation seriously. "You can't disregard it," the source said.

"Nobody wants to vote no on it, and then God forbid, something happens."

IN ORDER TO make it to the league meeting agenda, the NFL competition committee discussed the tush push proposal and held an informal vote at its meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after the combine. Three sources familiar with the competition committee's proceedings said there was support for the proposal within the committee, though not unanimous. (Unanimous competition committee approval isn't required to advance club proposals, but the competition committee will advise clubs not to go forward with proposals that it believes have no legs.) Of the tush push proposal, Murphy confirmed the committee "was pretty strongly in favor of it."

When asked about the proposal ahead of Tuesday's vote, Packers coach Matt LaFleur said he wasn't involved in writing it and cited the reason for the proposal as aesthetics first, and then player safety.

"I don't think it's a great football play," he said. "It's more of a rugby play. And then some of the injury concerns we just want to get out in front of that and be a little bit more proactive than reactive."

In a Q&A for the Packers website published in February, Murphy did not mention injury risk as a reason to eliminate the tush push. Like LaFleur, the former NFL defensive back cited aesthetics.

"There is no skill involved and it is almost an automatic first down on plays of a yard or less," Murphy wrote. He advocated for reverting to the previous version of the rule that prohibited aiding the runner. That rule changed to allow pushing ball carriers in 2005, with then-NFL vice president of officiating Mike Pereira citing difficulty in officiating it as a reason for the switch.

"This would bring back the traditional QB sneak," Murphy wrote. "That worked pretty well for Bart Starr and the Packers in the Ice Bowl."

Another source with direct knowledge of the competition committee's thinking said, ahead of the vote, the proposal as it was written was too specific to a single scenario and team, and it should expand to include any pushing, comparing it to how pushing has not been allowed on field goal blocks since 2013. "A push is a push," the source said. "If it's illegal somewhere, it'll be illegal everywhere."

On Monday, Cowboys executive vice president and competition committee member Stephen Jones also spoke about a motivation to align the rulebook and make all wording about pushing consistent.

That sentiment is why competition committee chairman Rich McKay said the Packers offered to adapt their proposal to be similar to the rulebook language from before the league changed the rule to allow pushing. "Green Bay asked, 'Could we go back and talk about reintroducing the 2004 language, study it, understand it and talk about it again when we get to May?'"