Rob DemovskyNov 10, 2025, 06:00 AM ET
Rob Demovsky is an NFL reporter at ESPN and covers the Green Bay Packers. He has covered the Packers since 1997 and joined ESPN in 2013. Demovsky is a two-time Wisconsin Sportswriter of the Year as selected by the NSSA.
GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Week 6 Thursday night game between the Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants had not even reached halftime when Micah Parsons, watching on television, had seen enough of the tush push – a play that was nearly …
Rob DemovskyNov 10, 2025, 06:00 AM ET
Rob Demovsky is an NFL reporter at ESPN and covers the Green Bay Packers. He has covered the Packers since 1997 and joined ESPN in 2013. Demovsky is a two-time Wisconsin Sportswriter of the Year as selected by the NSSA.
GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Week 6 Thursday night game between the Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants had not even reached halftime when Micah Parsons, watching on television, had seen enough of the tush push – a play that was nearly banned during the offseason.
“This is not football!” the Packers’ pass rusher wrote in a post on X after Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts scored a 1-yard touchdown on their fourth straight tush push attempt.
For good measure, he added two emojis of a person discarding something into a trash can.
This is not football! 🚮🚮
— Micah Parsons (@MicahhParsons11) October 10, 2025
A week later, Parsons had no interest in backing down.
“I hate that play,” he said.
Even before saying that, however, he realized something.
“That might come [back] and bite me one day,” Parsons said.
That day might be Monday.
The Eagles play Parsons and the Packers on “Monday Night Football” at Lambeau Field (8:15 p.m. ET, ABC/ESPN) – and it was the Packers who sponsored the proposal to make the tush push illegal at the annual league meeting this past spring.
Don’t expect Philadelphia to forget that.
The proposed ban, which was initially tabled after an unofficial tally showed a 16-16 split among the 32 teams, received yes votes from 22 teams – two short of the required number to pass.
Monday’s game features two of the NFC’s top teams, as the Eagles (6-2) and Packers (5-2-1) meet in a rematch of last season’s NFC wild-card playoff game, won by the Eagles on their way to the Super Bowl championship.
There is also a game within the game, and it’s all about the tush push. How often will the Eagles run it against the team that tried to get it banned? Why did the Packers stop using it? And will NFL owners ban it before next season?
THE PACKERS HAD to know they would face pushback from the Eagles and other teams that supported the play. They also knew the Eagles were on their schedule for the 2025 season.
They sponsored the proposal anyway.
“The Packers didn’t do their coaches any favors if they weren’t sure they could get rid of it,” a defensive coach from another team said last week. “They knew they were going to have to play them again and if this thing didn’t pass, look out.”
Multiple NFL front office sources said the league office essentially recruited the Packers to submit the proposal, and a high-ranking executive from another NFC team said the league picked the Packers to do so because they don’t have a singular owner who would balk at such a request. The team is owned by a half-million-plus stockholders.
An NFL spokesperson would not comment on the league’s level of involvement with the proposal.
At the time of the proposed ban, then-Packers president Mark Murphy did not confirm or deny the league’s involvement, saying, “We’re always in touch with the league.”
Murphy retired in July but remains in favor of eliminating the tush push and believes there will be enough support to get it out of the NFL this coming offseason.
“I would be shocked if it wasn’t,” Murphy said in a recent interview. “It’s just a bad look for the league. And I didn’t realize it, I guess [officials] miss a lot of false starts. I guess because [players] are all bunched in so close together that it’s hard to see.”
The officiating aspect of the play was highlighted during the second quarter of the Eagles-Giants game that sent Parsons over the edge. Hurts fumbled the ball on a tush push, but the officials ruled Hurts’ forward progress had been stopped. Since the play couldn’t be reviewed, it was deemed there was no fumble.
If there is another proposal this offseason, the officiating angle might be what sways the vote instead of the argument used last time, which was based largely on the safety of the play.
Last month, NFL executive vice president of football operations Troy Vincent acknowledged that it is “very difficult to officiate in real time” despite intensified efforts to spot potential false starts in recent weeks.
“I don’t think you’ll find one defensive player in the league that’s like, ‘Oh yeah, go tush push, we got to learn how to stop it,’” said Parsons, who has gone against the play more than anyone else on the Packers because of the four years he spent with the Eagles’ NFC East rival Dallas Cowboys.
“You can’t stop it if they’re leaving early. It’s impossible. It’s an unfair advantage. You got 320-pound momentum coming early on the play. Like, whatever, but got to find a way.”
THE PACKERS INSISTED it was not sour grapes over their two losses to the Eagles last season (Week 1 in Brazil and the NFC wild-card playoff round) that prompted them to sponsor the proposal.
“They do it at a high level, and you never want to [ban it] just because they do it at a high level,” Packers coach Matt LaFleur said during the offseason. “I just think when you look at the play, it’s more of a rugby scrum than it is a football play.”
In Green Bay’s two games against Philadelphia last season, the Eagles ran the tush push four times, although only three were considered actual plays because there was a fumbled snap on one of them. Still, the Packers technically stopped them on that play. They also stopped one other attempt, while the Eagles converted two. So the Eagles’ success rate against the Packers, if the aborted play was included, was lower than their 82.1% conversion rate last season.
LaFleur has also used the tush push in the past – and that doesn’t include the play he ran five times last season (all of them successful) in which tight end Tucker Kraft motioned under center and ran a keeper.
In the 2023 season, the Packers ran the tush push five times with quarterback Jordan Love, usually with a running back and a receiver or tight end pushing from behind. They converted four of those five into first downs. They were successful on third-and-1 plays against the Bears, Buccaneers and Chiefs and on fourth-and-1 against the Rams. They failed only in their final attempt – a third-and-1 in Week 17 against the Vikings.
They have not run the play since the 2023 season.
When asked why, LaFleur said: “That’s a great question.”
When reminded that they converted four of the five tries, LaFleur said: “I remember the [one] that we [didn’t]. But yeah, it was just one of those decisions. I think every team’s built a little bit differently, and for me, it’s always, do you want your quarterback subject to some of those hits that he could potentially face in those situations?”
Last season, LaFleur and offensive coordinator Adam Stenavich installed the Kraft play, which looked similar but wasn’t predicated on being pushed from behind.
— NFL (@NFL) January 12, 2025
“The way we ran it, it wouldn’t have been a banned play [under the proposal],” Kraft said earlier this season before he sustained a season-ending knee injury on Nov. 2. “We weren’t in the wing double-push. I was short-motioning in, and the running back and the quarterback were already in the backfield. They can’t run up pre-snap because it would be a penalty, so by definition, the way we ran it, it wouldn’t have been an illegal play.”
From the NFL’s inception through 2005, an offensive player not in possession of the ball was not permitted to assist the ball carrier by pushing him. However, the rule was changed following the 2005 season, and it opened the door for plays like the tush push.
**THE PACKERS **WILL find out Monday night just how personally the Eagles took the proposed ban. Philadelphia has run the tush push 17 times in eight games so far this season, which is down from their usage in past seasons. In each of the previous two seasons, they ran it 21 times in the first eight games, according to ESPN Research.
Their 2025 conversion rate of 76.5% is also down. In fact, their success rate has dropped every year. They were at 92.6% in 2022, 83.3% in 2023 and 82.1% last season.
If the Packers want to pick the brain of someone who was a part of the play in 2024, they can ask their backup offensive tackle Darian Kinnard, who spent last season with the Eagles. However, Kinnard said practicing against it won’t do much good.
“It’s hard to simulate because a lot of the guys who do it have a better feel for it,” Kinnard said. “It’s also hard to simulate, especially because you try to take care of your guys, too.”
Kinnard came to the Packers via a trade in August, which means he was in Philadelphia all offseason while the ban was being discussed.
“Their feeling was like the same feeling I have: It’s part of football,” Kinnard said. “Everybody can quarterback sneak. They just do it at an elite level.”
At least one online gambling site, BetOnline, released an over/under for the number of times the Eagles will run the tush push against the Packers on Monday. It was set at 1.5.
A long-time offensive assistant thinks the Eagles will want to prove a point. When asked how many times he thinks they’re going to run, he said: “Over and over and over and over. Heck, they might run it on second-and-2 just to shove it in your face.
“Does it belong in football? I don’t know. They’re not the only team that’s running it. I’ve seen other teams do it. Stop it or join the party.”
Or as Kinnard said: “Just keep it from being third-and-short. That’s really the best answer.”