The Green Bay Packers‘ proposal during the NFL Annual Meeting to ban the tush push was tabeled, and we now know what’s next for the play the Philadelphia Eagles have made famous.
During the NFL’s spring meeting in May, the Packers, according to ESPN, plan to revise and rewrite the proposal in hopes of garnering enough support to have the play banned.
“Two sources in Tuesday’s voting session said clubs were split,” ESPN’s Kalyn Kahler writes. “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?”
Altering the proposal to ban pushing in any fashion, offensively or defensively could significantly impact the game, how it is played, how it’s officiated, and go a long way towards removing the tush push or any other variation of it, moving forward.
Philadelphia is likely to continue lobbying hard to have teams vote against any proposal to ban the play between now and when the May meetings begin.
Whether teams believe that the play doesn’t belong in football, or if there winds up being significant injury data that backs up the risk players face when running or trying to defend it could go a long way towards teams voting in favor of the Packers’ proposed rule change banning the play.
