Titans image gets a boost with their role in the tush push ban ruling at NFL owners meetings
Logic and reason prevails, thanks in part to the Titans
The eyes of the NFL world were on Eagan, Minnesota on Wednesday as a general session of the NFL Owner’s Meetings took place to discuss a handful of matters up for vote. Most notably: banning the tush push.
Heading into the vote, which had been tabled until today from back during the Owner’s Meetings in March, folks around the league were expecting the ban to be passed. Three-fourths of the league needed to vote to legislate the rule out of existence, and people in the know were anticipating those 24 votes to materialize.
After a lengthy and reportedly heated discussion—which included an impassioned defense of the play from Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie and tush push ambassador Jason Kelce—the final tally was 22-10. The proposal to ban the play failed to pass.
The Eagles social media team took to the internet to celebrate, posting a graphic including a tush push against the Packers from last year. This dig at Green Bay (the team who was originally championing the proposal) took a poetic turn when the vote came back 22-10, which was the exact score of the Eagles victory over the Packers to knock them out of the playoffs in January.
The proposal was unanimously approved for the vote by the league’s competition committee, player health and safety committee, and owner health and safety committee per competition chairman Rich McKay, but “In this case, those votes were not there, so it stays the way it is.”
Adam Schefter got the list of teams who voted to keep the play legal and posted it on social media.
Amongst those teams was the Tennessee Titans. Controlling Owner Amy Adams Strunk was one of the ten owners who voted against the ban. In the AFC South, only the Titans and Jaguars voted to protect the play. The Colts and the Texans, well, they didn’t help themselves in the public eye on this one.
The Lions were the only team on the Eagles schedule this year who voted not to ban the play. The fighting Dan Campbell’s weren't afraid to compete either, in the least shocking news of the week.
On X, these ten teams were somewhat tongue-in-cheek celebrated by the majority of NFL fans as the clubs who aren’t afraid to compete. If you ask me, these ten franchises are the only honorable teams in the league at the moment. God bless them for having the stones and the common sense to be responsible stewards of this beautiful sport.
The ban failing to pass is a win for logic and the spirit of football. As many have argued, there is perhaps no play more fundamental to the essence of the game than a scrum that pushes a runner up the middle of the trenches.
Some champions of the ban pointed to the potential safety risks the play posed, but a basic review of the injury data on the play since it became popular a couple years ago shows zero evidence that it’s a particularly risky one for player health.
There’s also the fact that, frankly, this is impossible to frame as anything other than a whiny attack on the Super Bowl champion Eagles. They’re the only team in the entire league who has succeeded with the play consistently all this time. They put it on the radar of the rest of the league years ago, and nobody else has mastered it like they have. If even one other team figured out how to make it the “cheat code” that many accuse it of being, maybe we’d be having a different conversation about balancing offense and defense in the sport. But until then, the real answer to this issue is that the Eagles players are better, the technique their coaches teach is better, and that’s a competitive advantage they’ve earned. There’s nothing unfair about the other team being better than you. Just get good!
While we’re here, a quick rundown on other hot topics to come out of this meeting: the highly controversial proposal by the Lions to redo the seeding and home field structure of the playoffs was withdrawn but the team earlier in the morning. It reportedly didn’t have the legs to pass anyways.
The long-speculated next step in the NFL completely taking over our lives—an 18th regular season game—wasn’t discussed… this time. It’s coming eventually, whether we like it or not. The topic of a contract extension for Commissioner Roger Goodell wasn’t broached today either.
And finally, in the greatest bit of news to come out of this meeting, a new award has been officially created: Protector of the Year.
Finally, offensive linemen are going to get their due during award’s season. Ironically, this may just go to a different Eagle every year for the foreseeable future. But it’s great news for real ball knowers and lovers of the sport nonetheless.
Did the Titans just find their next Will Compton who traded in some of his humor to be better at football?
What if Will Compton was a little less funny and a lot better at football
Titans QB competition between Cam Ward and Will Levis is necessary performance: three reasons why Tennessee is doing this right
This “QB competition” is a sham. But it’s necessary.
