Does the NFL need to ban the tush push?

Yahoo Sports’ Jason Fitz and Caroline Fenton discuss if the NFL needs to ban the tush push or do teams need to learn how to stop it?

Video Transcript

I want to see greatness, and greatness is being executed every time the Philadelphia Eagles pull off the tush push.

This conversation that it should be banned to me is cowardly by the rest of the league.

It’s cowardly by the rest of the fans.

Is it because your team can’t do it?

That doesn’t mean nobody else should be.

Able to do it.

To me, it is the equivalent of saying, you know what, we can’t really figure out how to shut down Justin Jefferson on this one route.

So we’re just not going to let any wide receivers run it ever again.

It’s stupid.

It’s absolutely insane that we’re having this conversation that the tush push cannot and should not go anywhere.

Are we doing this again?

Like, or is this really in the conversation again?

Because, of course, this was the topic of conversation in March at the NFL owners meetings of potentially banning the tush push, and there were so many people, whether it’s behind closed doors, in front offices, or very loud on TV banging on the table for this to be banned, and I just have to ask myself.

Why?

Why do you want it banned?

Do you want it banned because nobody can stop it?

Well, that’s not my problem.

I mean, Patrick Mahomes has looked unstoppable for a better part of his career, but I’m not going to get up here and say that Patrick Mahomes should be banned from the NFL because he’s just too good, because he’s just too effective, because he’s just so unstoppable.

Of course, we would never do that, we would never even dream of doing that.

That sounds silly even coming out of my mouth.

So why are we applying that exact same logic to the tush push?

If you don’t like it, learn how to stop it.

Just go back and watch the playoffs last year.

If the Buffalo Bills had been able to execute a tush push, they would have advanced in the playoffs.

They could not.

So, when we sit here and say it’s unblockable, when we sit here and say it has to be eliminated because it’s not a safe play, it’s not a fair play.

There’s nothing anybody can do about it.

It can’t be officiated.

Well, for 31 out of 32 teams, it damn well can be.

So, like, this isn’t about the league.

This is about the Eagles and the rest of the league understanding they can’t do something as well as the Eagles.

But I do want to show the other side of it, because there have been a lot of people that have expressed frustration with the tush push.

I see your arguments, and I hear your arguments.

And the one that I will agree with is the fact that when you slow the tush push down, that one that we’re seeing right there, Eagles, Chiefs on Sunday, if you slow it down and you show it from an angle where you’re looking at the line of scrimmage head on, you can see the guards start to move before the snap.

That there is just such a teeny tiny, slight false start and the center is moving just a little.

So offsides and it may be too quick and so subtle that the human eye, the naked eye or referee’s eye can’t notice it.

But when you slow it down, it seems fairly obvious.

So I do understand the arguments that we’re seeing right there.

The number of penalties that the Eagles or anyone that executes tush push may be committing in the process, but to that I say, learn how to officiate it.

Don’t ban it.

Does the NFL need to ban the tush push?

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