The NFL Competition Committee co-chairman Rich McKay said Sunday that he’s not anticipating an attempt to ban the tush push this year after a year filled with controversy.
“There’s no team proposal that I’ve seen from it,” McKay said following a day of meetings at the NFL combine. “So, I wouldn’t envision it. But you never know.”
The 2025 season saw a year-over-year uptick in attempts but a decline in effectiveness of the play after its dominance in short yardage situations over the past three years.
There were however a number of controversial moments with the play with referees missing blatant false start penalties and another moment during a Giants-Eagles game earlier in the season when the play was whistled dead prematurely while Jalen Hurts was having the ball ripped out of his hands.
In September, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that there was “no guarantee” for another attempt to ban the quarterback sneak play. The ESPN insider wrote that the conversation surrounding the Tush Push ban last offseason was heated and emotional, meaning the league’s owners might decide to hold off on further discussion for another year.
Last year, the Green Bay Packers proposal to ban the Tush Push ultimately fell two votes shy of the requisite 24 votes needed to institute the ban. The proposal would have re-established the NFL rule that existed until 2005, which banned other players from pushing ball carriers regardless of where they were on the field.
