Sounds like the Tush Push will be safe again in 2026 originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia
INDIANAPOLIS — It sounds like the Tush Push is going to stick around for the 2026 season.
A year after a raging debate and a subsequent vote on the future of the Eagles’ signature play, NFL competition committee co-chairman Rich McKay said he doesn’t anticipate an attempt to ban the Tush Push this year, according to ESPN.
“There’s no team proposal that I’ve seen from it,” McKay said at the NFL combine, via ESPN. “So, I wouldn’t envision it. But you never know.”
Last offseason, the Green Bay Packers formally introduced a rule change proposal that would have banned the play. That proposal was tweaked and then failed by just two votes at league meetings in May.
It’s worth noting that the Eagles were not nearly as successful at the play in the 2025 season. According to the Tush Push tracking website TushPush.fyi, the Eagles were successful on just 21 of 33 attempts (63.6%) last season. The Eagles were over 81% in 2024.
“It’s becoming tougher and tougher,” quarterback Jalen Hurts said after the loss to the Bears on Black Friday.
The big thing that changed during the 2025 season was that opposing defenses began to attack the Tush Push differently and were able to find some success by collapsing the edges and attacking the pushers and by trying to strip the ball from Hurts’ hands.
The Eagles worked for years to perfect and protect the play and will probably work to figure it out even more this offseason.
“Just like how we do with anything,” head coach Nick Sirianni said during last season. “They adjust, you adjust, you try to make complements off of it, as many as you can, to keep them honest. All the different things that you do to help. I know it’s a unique play that gets a lot of attention and a lot of talk, but you handle it the very same way. You still teach the fundamentals the same way you would in an inside zone and the adjustments that come off of that and the things that the defense is doing and how you can combat that.”
Last May, the proposal from the Packers needed 24 votes to pass and the final vote was 22-10 in favor of the ban. Eagles legend Jason Kelce joined Jeffrey Lurie in an effort to keep the play legal and it worked just enough.
McKay last offseason said the Competition Committee doesn’t like to make rules that affect just one or two teams, but many felt like this proposal was an attack on the Eagles because of their success with the play. The only team on the Eagles’ schedule in 2025 that voted with them was the Lions.
The original rule proposal last year cited player safety but NFL vice president of football operations Troy Vincent was on record saying there were zero injuries on the play in 2024. Lurie spoke out against that specific argument.
But at the owners meetings in Florida in March, the 30-40 minute discussion went beyond player safety and into the realm of aesthetics. Eventually, during last season, a new talking point emerged about the referees’ inability to officiate the play.
Talk about banning this play spans years now.
“All I know is everything we’re doing is legal and it works,” Eagles general manager Howie Roseman said way back in March of 2023. “And just because people do something that’s really good, doesn’t mean it should be outlawed.”