Inside the NFL tush push debate that thwarted its ban — thanks first and foremost to Jason Kelce

EAGAN, Minn. — As the privileged session of the NFL meeting continued behind closed doors, a 6-foot-3 man in a blazer, slacks and loafers (no socks) jumped into an animated demonstration.

Seven-time Pro Bowl Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce crouched into a blocking stance and extended his arm.

He’d already demonstrated his tush push technique, physically and via film, to team owners and executives in the competition committee meeting that began as a general session.

Now as his new demonstration began in the hallway, Kelce’s gregarious nature belied the uncertainty penetrating the Omni Vikings Lake hotel ground floor.

Would the ban, that six weeks earlier was eight votes short of its necessary 24-team threshold, pass?

Would players no longer be permitted to push, pull or lift into the air the runner ahead of them … even though the tush push play that had come to characterize this debate occurred on just 0.28% of NFL plays last season, per ESPN data?

Kelce and Eagles team owner Jeffrey Lurie had beseeched decision-makers during a 9 a.m. rules meeting to let slide a play that has not produced a spike in injuries but nonetheless generated a curious wave of support for its removal.

Ninety minutes later, as the vote was pushed into a session open only to team owners and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, speculation heightened that Goodell’s not-so-subtle disdain for the play would win out.

Then suddenly, push notifications hit phones across the halls. The Eagles’ Twitter account confirmed what the hallway-loitering executives had yet to clarify.

The tush push, for the 2025 season, was safe. The proposal fell two votes short of the threshold to pass it.

“Push on,” the Eagles tweeted.

Kelce did.

He shook hands with NFL executive vice president of football operations Troy Vincent before strolling to the elevator bank.

A handful of reporters followed him there, seeking comment from a player who had long been helpful in offering it.

Kelce declined.

“I’m not here to talk to the media,” he said.

He was there, on the Eagles’ invitation to Minneapolis, to save the tush push.

How a wild and possibly Eagles-targeted debate almost succeeded

At first, the Green Bay Packers' disdain for the Eagles' signature play seemed like a joke.

Would the NFL really punt a play from the game because one team was exceedingly good at it?

A multi-pronged campaign began to achieve the necessary consensus. Convince some teams to fear the injuries that could (albeit to this point had not) result from a player pushing with his head down? Check. Generate concern about the authenticity of a play some felt required “no skill” and resembled rugby more than football? Check. How about a dose of friendly competition, reminding teams that the Eagles used this play on the road to their Super Bowl title … so did teams really want to let them keep those advantages? Add a play that worked so automatically that Cowboys team owner Jerry Jones even questioned its entertainment value, and a concurring opinion seemed promising.

“The world champion is the main focus of the tush push,” Jones said from the hallway after the meeting, “and here we are debating it and having to decide, ‘Well, am I really against the tush push or do I just not want Philadelphia to have an edge?’ I sit there and fight that too, smile when they’re making the presentation.”

There was a level of absurdity, from debating a play so infrequent to debating a play that billionaire team owners were describing with the word “tush,” that Jones couldn’t help but jest.

“I don’t know,” he said, laughing about whether his intentions were pure. “I flip-flop.”

Between votes in early April and mid-May, some teams did, too.

The momentum for a ban was unquestionably stronger at this meeting than the last. The competition committee supported the Packers' amended proposal that broadened the rule change and would have reverted team rules to a pre-2005 ban of pushing and pulling plays. The health and safety committee — both the owners' health and safety committee and the players' health and safety committee, per Goodell — supported the elimination of a tactic that some data said put players at risk for a catastrophic injury if an injury did occur.

And Goodell, despite publicly insisting that he was “neutral,” was overwhelmingly believed to support if not pressure teams to support the ban.

The introduction of the proposal by the Packers, the one club without a majority team owner, prompted more suspicion about Goodell’s involvement.

The league office was “working actively behind the scenes in support of the ban,” one high-ranking AFC executive told Yahoo Sports.

Teams opposed to the ban held many calls on the topic in the days leading up to the vote in hopes they could thwart the tide coming from headquarters at 345 Park Ave., the executive said.

With a 22-10 vote that showed the fear generation had been effective albeit insufficient, the tush push play survived.

Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones, a member of the league’s competition committee, said he was surprised how strong the sentiment to ban was. Jones said Kelce explained helpfully how safe he felt when he had pushed.

A high-ranking executive from a different NFC team credited Kelce and Jerry Jones for engaging in healthy debate about the play that led to each better understanding the other’s concerns.

“You either like the pushing and pulling or you don’t,” Stephen Jones said. “And some people have an opinion that they don't mind it and some people have an opinion you want it out of the game.

“I respect their opinion and that's why we have governance.”

The tush push is safe for 2025. But is it safe for long?

The debate was extraordinary for several reasons.

Its length led multiple attendees to wonder why this was an early-morning agenda item and not left until the end when it would be all that needed to drag on.

The proposal’s seeming target paved the way for Kelce to be allowed into the meeting — a tactic executives did not remember happening previously, even when their receiver’s push-off was in question or their linebacker’s horse-collar tackle was in jeopardy.

But clubs respected that the Eagles’ passion didn’t cross the line into victimhood, an NFC executive said.

A league official credited Kelce as the most helpful and most impassioned speaker there.

Could more players attend these meetings to give on-field perspective of debated topics, some wondered?

Clubs with agendas will want that. Goodell and his colleagues, who many believed did not achieve their desired outcome Wednesday, may not.

The practice impact of this ban would have been minimal, both because the Eagles and Buffalo Bills were the only ones to use the tactic regularly and because Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts (and likely the Bills' Josh Allen) have the strength to pull off the sneak even without a push.

“Teams are going to get the sneak regardless of the push,” a league source with knowledge of the debates told Yahoo Sports. “Sometimes the pusher doesn’t even get to make contact with Hurts. Other times he does, but it’s after the first down was reached.”

But a principle failed to permeate as the tush push ban failed.

There is belief by some in the league that eliminating higher-risk plays, even without proven injury records, is a necessary step to expanding the regular season to an 18-game slate. That expansion will factor heavily into the league’s next media rights deal, which is expected to be negotiated before 2029 and possibly much sooner.

This would not be the first health-and-safety olive branches the league aimed to extend in exchange for more games and more games abroad.

For now, the league had even less success stopping the play than defenders who have failed to stop the Eagles and Bills on 87% of tush pushes the past three years, per ESPN data. (The rest of the league converted at a 71% clip.)

With just two votes standing in the way, a return of this debate in 2026 would not be surprising.

“We wanted the committee to look at it,” Goodell said. “We'll see how it goes this season and then we'll come back in.

“We'll discuss.”