One year ago, the conversation around a potential ‘Tush Push’ ban was one of the biggest stories of the offseason.
This year, the NFL’s competition committee hasn’t heard a peep about a new proposal to ban the play, a quarterback sneak that also involves one or more other players pushing the ball carrier from behind.
‘There’s no team proposal that I’ve seen from it,’ league competition committee co-chair Rich McKay said at the NFL combine. ‘So, I wouldn’t envision it. But you never know.’
The 2025 NFL season saw a year-over-year uptick in attempts but a decline in the effectiveness of the Tush Push after its dominance in short yardage situations over the previous three years.
There were 112 Tush Push attempts in 2025, per ESPN, after a 2024 season that featured 101 attempts to run the play. The Philadelphia Eagles and Buffalo Bills led the way with 27 and 17 Tush Push attempts, respectively, in 2025.
Teams converted a first down on 76.8% of Tush Push attempts in 2025, according to ESPN, a notable dip from the 82% conversion rate on the play between 2022 and 2024.
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.
At the time, Green Bay and other teams that supported the Tush Push ban cited player safety among primary concerns for keeping the play permissible.
Former Eagles center Jason Kelce, who was an advocate for keeping the Tush Push legal, spoke at last year’s owners meeting to share his perspective on the safety of the play.
‘There was a narrative out there that one of the reasons I retired was because of the play, or that I somehow felt like the play led to more injuries or was injured because of it,’ Kelce said in an episode of his ‘New Heights’ podcast last May. ‘So I was really just there to offer my perspective on that stuff not being true and the fact that I think it’s a relatively safe play.’
The NFL has not publicly shared any data regarding the health of players surrounding the Tush Push.
