As tush push sides make their cases before NFL team owners vote on Eagles’ play, one rival called it ‘a cheapo play’

“But I know the argument’s going to be about like, ‘Hey, you guys have to stop it,” Luvu said. “Don’t get us in short yardage, and what not. I mean, it’s kind of like a cheapo play. …

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“It’s pretty much a scrum in rugby. That’s how I kind of look at it. And we’ve got to have a scrum, too, on the other side. And the scrum is, we have a cadence where we all go at once. It’s not like you hard count and this and that, where now you’re getting us — or myself — jumping over the pile thinking that you’re going to snap the ball. That’s just my own personal opinion, and I’m going to leave it at that.”

There weren’t enough votes in April to ban the tush push. Will that change this week as owners vote behind closed doors?

Will NFL team owners ban the tush push?

The play has already been on the agenda once and was given a reprieve. Franchise owners opted to table the topic during spring meetings in April following a charged debate. They will meet again in Minneapolis starting Tuesday and are expected take up the subject again. Any rule change will require 24 of the 32 club owners to vote in support of it.

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The tush push involves multiple players lining up behind a ball carrier and pushing him forward toward a line of gain in short-yardage situations. The Super Bowl champion Eagles have repeatedly and effectively utilized it for multiple seasons to push quarterback Jalen Hurt over the goal line with defenses nearly helpless to stop it.

The Bills have also adopted the play to take advantage of the size and strength of quarterback Josh Allen near the goal line. They’ve both done so with great success. Per ESPN research, Philadelphia and Buffalo have utilized the play more than the other 30 teams combined in the past three years to an 87% success rate in terms of converting either a touchdown or a first down.

Is player safety really at stake here?

Some teams — most notably the Green Bay Packers — don’t think this is fair. The Packers proposed the rule change that would prohibit “an offensive player from pushing a teammate who was lined up directly behind the snapper and receives the snap, immediately at the snap.”

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The cited reason for the proposal? “Player safety; pace of play.”

There’s no data to support that player safety is further risked by the tush push, a point that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell made in April while simultaneously suggesting — without data — that the tush push does offer an increased risk of injury.

“We have very little data from it, but beyond data, there’s also the mechanism of injury that we study … that leads us to show the risk involved in a particular play or particular tackle,” Goodell said on April 2. “There are a lot of plays where you see someone pulling or pushing somebody that are not in the tush push formation that I think do have an increased risk of injury.”