Can we stop pretending the NFL is a league or extraordinary gentlemen? If the $12 billion dollar conglomerate was any shadier it’d be short-selling transparency for a hedge fund of a shell corporation in the Cayman Islands. What’s happening with the Tush Push rule isn’t about protecting players, maintaining fairness, or preserving the soul of the game. It’s about optics, image control, and let’s be honest – power.
This whole process reeks worse than a sun-baked porta-potty at an Arkansas chili cook-off. The signature play of the Philadelphia Eagles, the Tush Push, is coding and could be pronounced dead at the Spring League meetings May 20-21 in Minnesota. The Green Bay Packers were the ones who technically submitted the rule-change proposal to ban the play at the league meetings in Palm Beach a couple months ago. It was a half-assed written submission proposing to change the language of the rule so as to prevent the Philadelphia Eagles from successfully executing their iconic short yardage play to a farthewell. But according to Mike Florio of Pro Football Focus, who joined the Rich Eisen show on Monday, the Packers were just a front for the league so that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell could escape any pending criticism of his ideas and motives for change. It’s a typical NFL move – plant the seed behind closed doors, then get a team to water it in public so it doesn’t look like the league is the one driving the proposed alteration.
Now of course they’re pivoting. Instead of just banning the “immediate push” on quarterback sneaks which was what the Packers were proposing, a vague, unmeasurable, and borderline unenforceable wrinkle in the rule, the new approach is to go back to the way it was before 2006, and outlaw all pushing of any kind, anywhere on the field. That’s what’s on the table when the owners meet again later this month.
“Rich McKay has been the chairman of the Competition Committee forever, and the Falcons, under his watch, have received what many would call lenient punishments for various infractions, including using fake crowd noise during the 2013 season”, said Florio. “They lost a fifth-round pick for that, which most people would agree is a lighter penalty than the offense deserved. Just recently, the 49ers lost a fifth-round pick for an accounting error that was found to have no impact on the salary cap and no intent to circumvent it.
McKay’s long-standing position has led some around the league to believe he’s effectively a pipeline for pushing through whatever the league office wants. People have asked, ‘Why don’t we rotate that role?’ Because it seems like the Competition Committee has become a tool for the league to get what it wants while hiding behind the façade of team proposals.
Take the playoff reseeding proposal. Sure, it came from the Lions and their team president, but word is the league approached them first and offered to co-sponsor it so it would look like a team-driven idea. In reality, this is what the commissioner wants and if you listen closely to what he says, he’s barely hiding it. If Roger Goodell wants something, he gets it. Expect 24 votes to eliminate the push play when the owners meet in Minneapolis on May 20 or May 21.”
Roger Goodell wants this rule gone and when Goodell wants something, history tells us he gets it. It’s his league and surreptitiously, his call.
So what’s the takeaway? Simple. The Falcons got a few slaps on the wrist, and McKay’s jersey stayed clean. Now, nearly a decade later, he’s still in position to grease the league’s agenda by acting as a “neutral voice” while doing exactly what the NFL wants done. It’s not hard to connect the dots.
As Florio stated on The Rich Eisen Show, this exact thing just happened with the playoff reseeding proposal. The Lions are the team that submitted it but as Florio revealed, the league actually approached them first. So once again, it looks like a team initiative, but it’s just the league playing the Wizard, pulling levers and strings behind a curtain of “fair process.”
It’s PR theater. It’s democracy on the outside, but oligarchy behind the curtain.
And all of this because the Eagles got too damn good at a legal play. The Tush Push is nothing more than a smart exploitation of a rule that’s been on the books since 2006. The play’s effectiveness isn’t even about the push from behind – it’s about dominance of their offensive line and the push from up front. But the NFL doesn’t like how it looks so now it’s got to go.
So if you’re keeping score at home: the Eagles innovated and the league panicked. The commissioner schemed and the patsies yielded. As for Rich McKay, I guess payback’s a switch.
