Eagles Legend Jason Kelce Attends NFL Meetings to Lobby Against Tush Push Ban

The Philadelphia Eagles are calling in reinforcements in a last-ditch attempt to save the tush push before NFL owners vote on a proposed rule to ban the play on Wednesday.

Per ESPN’s Adam Schefter, Eagles legend Jason Kelce traveled to Minneapolis, where the league meetings are being held, to argue on behalf of his former team in favor of keeping their signature play.

CBS Sports’ Jonathan Jones added Kelce’s presence is part of the Eagles “preparing an argument” in defense of the tush push.

Fox Sports’ Jordan Schultz added:

Kelce explained on the New Heights podcast that he received an invite to Minneapolis and will answer any questions anyone from the league might have regarding the play and his experience running it.

There’s a growing sense that the owners will vote to ban the tush push. The Athletic’s Dianna Russini reported Wednesday morning that the league’s competition committee and players’ health and safety committees voted in favor of the ban.

The final step in the process is a vote that requires at least 24 votes from the 32 team owners to get the play banned. ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler reported Tuesday that the owners’ vote is expected to be “pretty close.”

Kelce, who played center for the Eagles, said in the past that it “sucks” to run the tush push because he could end up with multiple 300-plus-pound players on top of him:

“It’s a grueling play where you’re going to get as low as possible . . . if I get grass on my facemask I probably did the play pretty good, because I got as low as possible and drove forward. If you get low and drive forward, it’s really hard for the defense to stop it.”

Even acknowledging that, Kelce admitted “how big an advantage it is” for the Eagles to be able to run the play at a high rate to avoid giving the ball back to the opposing team:

“Football is a sport that comes down to physicality, aggression, our will versus your will for a yard—I think that sums up football pretty well to me. It’s a 92 percent chance. Other teams don’t run it at the same success rate. Maybe the Eagles just happen to be really, really good at it. Is it fair to punish a team just because they’re better at it than everyone else? I don’t think that’s fair.”

Green Bay Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst, whose team wrote the original proposal to ban the tush push earlier in the offseason and revised it to be voted upon at this week’s league meetings, cited player safety as a key reason to ban the play.

The NFL’s own internal data has shown there has been a 0 percent injury rate on the tush push.

Since the start of the 2022 season, when the Eagles made the tush push a regular part of their offensive play-calling, their success rate on it has actually gone down every year. They were at 93 percent in 2022, then 83 percent in 2023 (Kelce’s final season) and 81.3 percent last season, per Fox Sports.

The Buffalo Bills are the only other team that has regularly incorporated the play into their offensive philosophy. They were 29-of-37 on quarterback sneaks in 2024, per Jeff Kerr of CBS Sports.

Philadelphia and Buffalo combined to run quarterback sneaks 85 times last season, according to Kerr. No other team did it more than 12 times.