The fate of the tush push will be up for discussion again along with the NFL’s history of giving division champions with mediocre records home field in the playoffs.
There will be a new topic as well when NFL owners gather Tuesday and Wednesday at the Minnesota Vikings headquarters after the league issued a proposal that would allow its players to participate in flag football when the sport makes its Olympic debut in Los Angeles in 2028.
“There’s more work to be done there,” NFL executive Jeff Miller said when the flag football proposal was released last week. “It will certainly be an important topic of conversation. … I would expect it to be an engaging and robust conversation on that topic.”
The Philadelphia Eagles’ famous tush push play has been a topic of conversation for years, reaching a new level when owners agreed to consider a proposal from the Green Bay Packers to ban the short-yardage scheme that has helped the Eagles win one Super Bowl and reach another.
Owners were set to vote last month but instead tabled the topic for more discussion of a play in which Jalen Hurts takes the snap on a quarterback sneak while two or three players line up behind him to try to push him past the first-down line or into the end zone.
The Eagles began using the play in 2022. The Buffalo Bills are among several teams that started using it, but no team has matched the Eagles’ success rate.
“There are definitely some people that have health and safety concerns, but there’s just as many people that have football concerns,” NFL competition committee Chairman Rich McKay said last month. “So I wouldn’t say it was because of one particular health and safety video or discussion. It was much more about the play, the aesthetics of the play, is it part of what football has been traditionally, or is it more of a rugby play?”
It has been a virtual guarantee that the Eagles use the play on fourth-and-1, and sometimes even when needing 2 yards on fourth down.
“There’s no data that shows it isn’t a very safe play, or else we wouldn’t be pushing the tush push,” Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie said.
The Detroit Lions have proposed getting rid of a playoff system in which division champions get the top four seeds in each conference regardless of record.
The original proposal by the Lions had the teams in each conference seeded one through seven based on their records, with all four division champs still guaranteed postseason berths. There also has been discussion of leaving the wild-card round alone and reseeding for the divisional playoffs.
The current system has led to quite a few situations in which wild-card teams with much better records were forced to play a fourth-seeded division champion on the road.
Last season, for example, the Vikings finished a game behind the Lions in the NFC North at 14-3 and had to play at the NFC West champion Los Angeles Rams (10-7). The Rams rolled to a 27-9 victory.
During the 2010 season, the New Orleans Saints were the defending Super Bowl champion with an 11-5 record but didn’t win the NFC South. The Saints had to visit the NFC West champion Seattle Seahawks, who finished 7-9 but had one of the best home-field advantages in the league. The Seahawks won 41-36.
The NFL has been making a big push into flag football in hopes of increasing youth participation and opportunities for women in the sport. The league played a major role in making sure the Los Angeles Olympics would be the first with flag football, with events for both men and women.
Several star players, including Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill, have expressed interest in the past in participating in the Olympics. Vikings running back Aaron Jones lit up when asked last month about the possibility.
“I would absolutely love it. Every other sport gets an opportunity to win a gold medal,” Jones said. “And if you’re not serving your country in the military, I feel like that’s the other highest honor.”
The proposal would allow only one player per NFL team to be selected by a country for the Olympics in addition to each team’s designated international player.
It also provides for injury protection and salary-cap credit in case of injuries and requires minimum standards for medical staffs and field surfaces.