Did the Lions help keep the tush push legal for good?
NFL owners will vote on 5 playing rules proposals about changes to the kickoff and help for officials at their annual spring meetings next week
A year after the Detroit Lions helped defeat a ban on the tush push , opposition to the heavily-scrutinized quarterback sneak play seems to have lost its legs. When NFL executives gather in Phoenix for their annual spring meetings starting Sunday, March 29, the tush push won't be on the agenda of proposed rules changes. Atlanta Falcons CEO Rich McKay, co-chairman of the league's competition committee, said in a video conference Wednesday the success rate of the traditional quarterback sneak surpassed the success rate of the tush push last season and "there’s less talk about" the tush push now "within the football community.
" "There was no proposal on the table to put anything in this year to deal with that," McKay said. "There’s a position in there we take about open field and pushing and pulling that’s in there, just about the whistle and making sure that we’re as consistent as we can be in that moment, but not directed to the tush push. " Last year, NFL owners fell two votes short of banning the tush push , with the Lions among the teams that objected to the rule change.
Twenty-two teams voted in favor of the proposal, which needed 24 votes to pass. MORE: How Detroit Lions' biggest needs match up with 2026 NFL draft The Philadelphia Eagles popularized the play, converting quarterback sneaks of third- or fourth-and-1 at a rate of more than 90% in the 2022-24 seasons. The Lions s topped the Eagles on three of four tush-push plays in their loss to Philadelphia last November, and league-wide the conversion rate on the play last season fell to 76.
8%, according to Front Office Sports . Though no team proposed a ban on the play this spring – the Green Bay Packers did, at the behest of the league last year – McKay said that doesn't mean it's totally dead. "I don’t know that it’s the end of the debate because I think there’s still people that are concerned with the whole pushing element," he said.