Roger Goodell: Vote on tush push ban likely coming in May

After the dust settles on the draft, attention will turn (in time) to the effort to nudge the tush push from the rulebook. Appearing last night on ESPN, Commissioner Roger Goodell was asked about the status of the play.

"For a long period of time up until 2006 that was you couldn't push or pull a player anywhere," Goodell said. "Is that part of football? Is that a football play? Or is it also a play that can bring some danger to it our, you know, safety concerns for our players? So I think we'll go through the discussion again, both with the Competition Committee, the ownership, and it [will] likely be voted on in May."

ESPN's Mike Greenberg asked Goodell whether he has a strong sense as to the outcome.

"No, I think — listen, there are strong views about 'is this a football play?', strong views about the safety of it, strong views about — listen a couple of teams do it well. So what? You know, that's a good thing, right? It brings innovation to the game. I think they're all valid views. You know, the great thing about the NFL is we work on a vote system with 24 out of 32. We consider all those things, we have great data on this. And I think, from that standpoint, I think we'll end up making the right decision."

Our sense continues to be that the league office wants to get rid of the maneuver. Which means the league will be twisting elbows in support of nixing the tush push.

However it goes, it's hard to agree with Goodell's claim that there is "great data" on the matter. There is no safety data as to the tush push. The safety argument is based on what could happen. And it feels as if the league office is sounding an alarm in the hopes of cajoling enough owners to get behind the idea that players should not be allowed to push the player with the ball from behind.

The easiest approach is to get rid of all pushing. If they do that, will the officials throw flags for downfield pushing? They currently aren't flagging downfield pulling. And there has been no foul called, we're told, for assisting the runner since the 1991 playoffs.

Instead of coming up with a broad rule aimed at masking the specific attack on the tush push, let's just call it what it is and identify a specific proposal aimed at eliminating it. The proposal the Packers made before the March meetings to ban an "immediate" push was deeply flawed.

The best outcome would be to ban pushing in the tackle box, and within five yards of each side of the line of scrimmage. To do that, however, the opponents of the tush push would have to admit that the rule change is specifically targeting a play that only two teams have mastered.