Jeffrey Lurie brought a heavy hitter with him to the NFL's league meeting. On Wednesday morning, the Philadelphia Eagles' owner arrived with former Eagles center Jason Kelce, who is there to lobby for keeping the "Tush Push" play alive, as reported by CBS Sports NFL Insider Jonathan Jones.
The Eagles are apparently ready to fight to keep the "Tush Push" from going extinct. The league tabled the play's fate back in April after 16 owners voted to ban the play. Any proposal needs at least 24 votes in order to pass; reports had surfaced in recent weeks suggesting there is now enough support to ban the play.
"I'm just going to answer any questions people have about my partaking of this play," Kelce said on his podcast with brother Travis Kelce of his decision to speak to the NFL owners. "I don't care whether it gets banned or not. At the end of the day, this is why you vote on things. If they vote to ban the 'Tush Push,' the Eagles are still gonna run quarterback sneak at a very high percentage."
Along with lobbying for the play, Kelce is in Minnesota to clarify questions regarding his history with the play and whether or not it played a role in his decision to retire. Kelce said that it played no role in his decision to retire after the 2023 season while adding that he would "gladly" come out retirement if he was told that his team was running the "Tush Push" 80 times per game.
"It'll be the easiest job in the world," Kelce said.
The Green Bay Packers are the team that initially submitted the proposal to ban the "Tush Push." The Packers have been vocal in their dislike of the play following their loss to the Eagles in the wild-card round of the NFC playoffs.
"There is no skill involved and it is almost an automatic first down on plays of a yard or less," Packers CEO Mark Murphy wrote on the Packers website prior to Philadelphia's Super Bowl win over the Kansas City Chiefs. "I would like to see the league prohibit pushing or aiding the runner (QB) on this play. There used to be a rule prohibiting this, but it is no longer enforced because I believe it was thought to be too hard for the officials to see. The play is bad for the game, and we should go back to prohibiting the push of the runner. This would bring back the traditional QB sneak. That worked pretty well for Bart Starr and the Packers in the Ice Bowl."
While it appears that Murphy is a lost cause, it'll be interesting to see if Kelce can help convince other owners to keep the play in the NFL for the 2025 season.
