The tush push remains alive after Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie and future Hall of Fame center Jason Kelce led a last-ditch effort to save Philly’s signature play.
Despite, according to league sources, the NFL’s competition committee and health and safety committee voting unanimously to ban the play, the final decision would be the owners’ vote. Only 22 teams cast a vote in favor of the ban, two short of the 75 percent threshold.
The sources who spoke for this story were granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly on the NFL’s closed-door discussions. This is how events unfolded at The Omni Viking Lakes Hotel in Eagan, Minn. on Wednesday morning.
After passing changes to the onside kick rules, it was time for the day’s main event, and time for Lurie to take center stage.
Lurie and Philadelphia’s front-office personnel had been calling around the league in the days leading up to this week’s league meeting. It was an attempt to garner enough support to keep Green Bay’s proposal, which would effectively ban the Eagles’ version of the QB sneak, from getting the 24 votes it needed to pass. Wednesday morning’s “Competition and Health & Safety” session was Lurie’s chance to make a final impression — and he spent the better part of an hour making it.
Lurie began by emphasizing the need to clean up the process around the play rather than the play itself, pointing to the fact that no data supports the idea that it’s inherently more dangerous than any other play on the field.
“It’s the safest play in the history of the game,” he told the room. “Whoever votes to ban this play is taking liability for putting risk on our quarterbacks.”
Lurie pointed out the need for owners to consider the fact that they are stewards of the game itself instead of voting based on what helps or hurts their specific teams: “We are owners, not members.”
One high-ranking league source who was in the room said, “Lurie was like a guy trying to convince his girlfriend why she shouldn’t leave him.” Throughout his pitch, Lurie was emotional, passionate and — at one point — crude. He said the fact that his team came up with a play so unstoppable that the rest of the league had no other choice but to try to ban it was “like a wet dream for a teenage boy.” Toward the end of his address, he told the assembled owners that, regardless of the day’s result, he and his franchise would walk out winners, with Super Bowl rings to show for it.
Kelce was up next. He spent his entire playing career with the Eagles, retiring after the 2023 season, and ran the tush push countless times over his final two seasons. On Wednesday, he wasn’t loud and animated, instead offering his expertise as an All-Pro center and arguing for why the play should remain in the game. He told the room: “If I could run 60 tush pushes a game, I’d come back.”
After discussion, the general session ended without a vote. Things moved to a more privileged setting for more debate and — quickly, it turns out — a vote. Green Bay’s proposal needed 24 votes to pass, but 10 teams (including the Ravens, Lions, Patriots and Jets) did not support it. That’s when Philly could rejoice. The Eagles’ social media team pounced within minutes.
— Philadelphia Eagles (@Eagles) May 21, 2025
Tabling the tush push discussion at the previous league meeting signaled to some around the league that the play’s days were numbered. But some of the sources I spoke to in the immediate aftermath of the news were not surprised by Wednesday’s result.
“It was a vote about process more than what was right,” one league source told me. “People don’t like the NFL telling people how to vote. ‘Health and safety’ was cited, but (NFL Chief Medical Officer) Alan Sills wasn’t here today.”
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While the Packers were the authors of the proposal, it’s important to note that they were not the only ones in favor of banning the play — the majority of the league voted in favor of Green Bay’s proposal. Commissioner Roger Goodell, according to a league source, finds the play ugly.
High-ranking front-office sources from four NFL teams said they felt the Packers were used by the league because of their lack of a principal owner. With Green Bay’s name on the “tush push proposal,” other teams — and their owners — could throw their support behind it without a single owner being targeted by those who opposed it.
Before this week’s meeting, the Packers resubmitted the proposal, broadening it beyond just the QB sneak, prohibiting “an offensive player from pushing, pulling, lifting, or assisting the runner except by individually blocking opponents for him.” Multiple league sources felt that alienated some teams: “Sounds like the Packers hurt themselves by adding other pushes versus (focusing on) just the tush push,” said one of those sources.
In the end, the tush push lives on, and the Eagles will surely continue to use it, likely to great success.
As for the rest of the NFL, the majority of the league remains unhappy with Wednesday’s result. One head coach, informed of the vote’s result as he left the practice field on Wednesday, summed it up this way: “Wow. This is a big loss … for the league.”
(Photo: Mark J. Rebilas / Imagn Images)
Dianna Russini is The Athletic's senior NFL insider. Prior to The Athletic she spent eight years with ESPN, providing NFL breaking news and analysis across the network's platforms. Follow Dianna on Twitter @DMRussini
