Why keeping the tush push preserves what makes the NFL great

Keep on pushing, Philly.

Or, as the Philadelphia Eagles posted: “Push on.”

The NFL voted at the owners’ meeting on Wednesday to preserve the rule that allows players to push one another, thereby preserving the legality of the “tush push.” From my vantage, the decision continued the precedent that the NFL is a league that rewards innovation and ingenuity.

For as ugly as the tush push is, it’s also genius.

If you’re like me, you enjoy the way players and coaches exploit loopholes in the league’s rule book. Bill Belichick and Pop Warner were famous (or infamous) for it. It’s how the forward pass was born — out of the decision to try to get away with something even the referees didn’t know was illegal. And that cheeky decision now defines the game.

Believe it or not, the tush push is a reminder that this game is much smarter than the average onlooker might expect. It’s a reminder that this game is more bookish than the average onlooker might expect. And I understand the irony that a rugby-style battle of inches might seem as meat-headed as any play ever invented. But this play was born out of a loophole. It was born out of a close study and adherence to the rule book. It was born out of experimentation. And that’s what makes the sport of football so special. Beneath the violence, there’s chess.

To be clear, this outcome to keep the tush push has come as something of a surprise. Maybe Jason Kelce’s presence had something to do with it. The former Eagles center lobbied owners to keep the play in existence just before the vote in Minneapolis. I thought the tush push would die. The NFL is a copycat league, but no one has figured out how to copy this particular play. 

So, it seemed, most of them would decide to ban it, because only one team truly benefits from the rule/loophole. Most thought the rule change would pass, which required the support of at least 24 teams. The vote to ban the play tallied to 22. Two votes away.

Currently (and moving forward), no one can pull or lift the ball carrier. The proposed language stated that players couldn’t “push” the runner either. Teammates couldn’t “assist the runner except by individually blocking opponents for him.” It was an effort to end the Eagles pushing Jalen Hurts (or the Bills pushing Josh Allen) on QB sneaks.

It was an attempt to reverse a rule change from 2006, when players were first allowed to push their teammates. Up to that point, ball carriers could not be pushed — but teams were doing it anyway and officials weren’t flagging it. Most often, the push occurred when a receiver caught the ball and — after making contact and seeing his momentum stopped — an offensive lineman (or another teammate) ran downfield to shove the ball carrier forward, sometimes over the goal line. If the officials weren’t officiating the rule, why include it? 

When the NFL changed the rule in 2006, no one saw the tush push coming.

This offseason, the failed rule proposal, pitched by the Green Bay Packers, stated the alteration is in the name of “player safety. Pace of play.”

FOX Sports NFL and college football rules analyst Dean Blandino didn’t see it that way. He said there are generally three reasons for introducing a rule change: 1) player safety, 2) competitive fairness and 3) officiating consistency. There’s no injury data that shows this play is more dangerous than any other. 

It’s more of a discussion of the second concept.

“To me, it’s a competitively unfair play, because we don’t allow the defense to push a runner back and gain an advantage, right?” Blandino told FOX Sports. “The runner is always going to get that forward progress spot. We don’t allow the defense to push on field goal and punt block, push teammates into the formation to gain that advantage. There’s also a safety element there.

“But here, when the runner’s progress is stopped, we allow the teammates to push and to gain that advantage, and very rarely are the officials killing the play. … It definitely is an advantage for the offense.”

The Eagles have argued that it’s not about fairness — but a play that requires practice and personnel. They have a unique advantage. Hurts is the most powerful running QB in the league. Philly is simply making use of that superlative, just like any other team would for its star players. And the Eagles have done it by inventing an ingeniously effective technique that they do better than anyone else.

Now that Philly has a Super Bowl win — in part through the use of this particular play — many of the other teams have spoken out that it’s unfair, including the Chiefs. Defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo told me he didn’t think the play could be stopped. 

“I think it would have been less controversial had the league made the — no pun intended — push to get this out last year,” Blandino said. “The fact that the Eagles have won the Super Bowl makes it that much more like, ‘Oh, they’re coming after us.'”

He added: “In my time at the NFL [as Vice President of Officiating], very rarely has one team perfected something where the league said, ‘We got to get rid of it.’ I don’t think that the league is looking at it from that perspective. I think they are concerned about safety. I think they are concerned about the competitive fairness, and I think some people just don’t like the play. … They don’t like the look of it.”

This is a large part of what makes the play unpopular. It doesn’t feature the athletic play-making like we saw from Saquon Barkley on his 180-hurdle. It doesn’t feature the ball skills of a one-handed catch like we’ve seen from A.J. Brown. The NFL wants more of that — and fewer offensive linemen grunting their way over a first-down line.

But if the NFL did away with this particular play, it would have to reexamine the schematic breakthroughs it has preserved.

As a point of reference, the “Cheat Motion” still exists. (There were false reports last offseason that it got banned — but it didn’t.) “Cheat Motion” is a unique concept that helps maximize production for speedy receivers, like Dolphins wideout Tyreek Hill. On plays where Miami used “Cheat Motion,” Hill set off in pre-snap motion laterally to build speed when most players are static, so that when the play started, he was already at a full sprint. It’s a page out of the CFL’s playbook. It prevented Hill from getting jammed at the line of scrimmage while also getting him into a number of his routes more quickly than when he started from a standstill. 

The same schema is behind both plays. It’s a manipulation of a loophole in the rules that suits a player or set of players who are unique. And I don’t use “unique” in a cavalier way. Hurts is a superlatively powerful runner from the QB position, which is how he executes the tush push. Hill is the fastest player in the NFL, which is why the “Cheat Motion” is effective for him — and less so for the other players running it, like Deebo Samuel, Tutu Atwell and Puka Nacua. No one has benefited more than Hill. And if the Dolphins had won the Super Bowl, maybe that play would have seen greater blowback. On top of that, a wrinkle like Cheat Motion creates highlights. The NFL likes passing-play highlights. 

Even though the tush push isn’t a play the NFL is proud to show on highlight reels, it’s a play that is in keeping with the league’s history of innovation. And to kill that would be to kill what makes the NFL so interesting.

Before joining FOX Sports as an NFL reporter and columnist, Henry McKenna spent seven years covering the Patriots for USA TODAY Sports Media Group and Boston Globe Media. Follow him on Twitter at @henrycmckenna. 

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