After only three owners voted in favor of banning the controversial "tush push" last spring, 16 did so at last month's meeting — and with it likely to come up again at the next meeting in Minneapolis on May 20 and 21, if you believe in extrapolation, that should be the end of it.
This is, of course, why the Eagles signed the 247-pound power back A.J. Dillon in free agency — from the Packers, who have led the clamor for the play's abolition.
But to paraphrase what John Houseman said in that iconic Smith Barney commercial, shouldn't teams seeking to convert on short-yardage and goal-line plays have to do it the old-fashioned way — by earning it?
(Even on Hollywood Squares, a contestant cannot win a game because his or her opponent guessed wrong — they have to earn it themselves.)
In other doings at the meetings and their aftermath, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell revealed the timetable to add an 18th game to the regular season — and it's 2027.
Yet when the pros and cons of 18 games are debated, one issue is almost universally overlooked: no team has ever made the playoffs after starting 0-5, and only one team — the 1992 Chargers — has ever even done so after starting 0-4. Keeping hope alive for every team for as long as possible is clearly beneficial to the integrity of the game — especially if the league continues to refuse to even consider a draft lottery (it has never even come to a vote).
But back to the main topic: despite the Dillon signing, the Eagles fans are acting like Richard Nixon — or even Michael Corleone by taking it personally that certain teams are in the vanguard of the anti-tush-push crusade — including, in addition to the Packers, the Rams and the Bills, all three of whom the Eagles just happen to play in 2025 (indeed, Eagles general manager Howie Roseman and assistant general manager Joe Ferrari almost came to blows with head coaches Sean McVay of the Rams and Sean McDermott of the Bills on the meeting's first day).
Another proposal that failed, at least for now, is the one that would take away the guarantee of a home game in the playoffs away from a team that won a weak division — but that, too, is likely to come up again in Minneapolis next month; and in case you're asking, that proposal requires a wild-card team to finish with an outright better record than a division champion in order to be seeded higher — a tie is no good, even if the former had beaten the latter head-to-head (the CFL has observed this since 1997 — that league has also played 18 games since 1986, except during the pandemic-shortened season of 2020).
The Eagles will survive just fine if the tush push is outlawed. Surviving the huge jump in strength of schedule that they must take in 2025 is another matter entirely.
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