The competition committee reportedly engaged in heated back-and-forth discussions over the weekend. Not-so-brotherly factions have emerged to ban the "Brotherly Shove", a decision ultimately tabled for more heated discussion at the May meetings.
And while commissioners, doctors, owners and coaches have weighed in on the Tush Push, we haven’t really heard much from players with significant things to say – until now.
On Wednesday morning’s edition of the New Heights podcast, Travis Kelce had a two-word reaction to those who seek to ban the play.
“It’s football.”
Kelce said perspective is important. While the play gets a lot of attention, especially when Jalen Hurts uses it to produce six points, it doesn’t happen often. In the Chiefs’ Super Bowl loss, even though coordinator Steve Spagnuolo devised several wrinkles to stop it, he never revealed them because the Eagles only needed to use it once.
“Listen, there are four downs that a team gets to get a first down or get in the end zone,” Kelce said. “The Tush Push is just one play that you run when you have a short-yardage situation. Those may come up a handful of times throughout a game."
“And it's like, you can't get upset at that one play. You know what I mean? And like, I understand the whole, if you want to say it's not safe. Football isn't a safe game to play. So, I know we're trying to make it safer or whatever. … I think it's a football-type of play. It's a toughness play that you need to be in sync with the guys next to you and the guys around you, and that's on both sides of the ball.”
Kelce’s brother and co-host, former Eagles center Jason Kelce, literally initiated every successful Tush Push before he retired at the end of 2023. He said any medical reasoning for outlawing the play is conjecture and not rooted in fact, and the only compelling reason to ban the play is competitive advantage, if that exists.
He also said former teammate and one-time rugby player Jordan Mailata said the play doesn’t have anything to do with rugby, that it’s simply a tough, physical test of wills. And while he’s tired of the topic surfacing every year, he also offered another reason for keeping it legal.
“I think it’s going to be a hard rule to enforce,” Jason Kelce said. “Like, are gang tackles outlawed? Are, you know, open field? Like, when big Creed Humphrey gets behind a running back and he's pushing him, pushing the pile forward, do we not want that? Because I like that. Yeah, I think it's hard to know, like where do you stop this from occurring? You can't just say like, ‘Hey, you can't do the Tush Push’. … It needs to be a rule that's enforceable throughout football.”
But if it’s not a hard rule, and at this point it seems difficult to get the 24 team votes needed for implementation, Spagnuolo last month offered the simplest and best advice for the NFL.
“It's a great conversation to have,” Spagnuolo said. “If they keep it in football, then we're just going to have to keep trying to find ways to stop it.”
