INDIANAPOLIS — Less than two hours before the 1988 AFC Championship Game between the Cincinnati Bengals and Buffalo Bills, Bengals head coach Sam Wyche was informed by the league that if his team used a quick count in the no-huddle (speed no-huddle, which was not as common as it is in the NFL today), as determined by the officials, the Bengals would be penalized and the down replayed.
“Pete Rozelle cannot change a rule,” Wyche said in response. “That has to be done by 28 owners, and obviously 28 owners haven’t congregated overnight. We played for 17 games to get here for this championship game under one set of rules, interpreted one way. We have used the no-huddle offense for 3 1/2 years. It has been endorsed by [supervisor of officials] Art McNally and the commissioner. It’s the principle.”
Wyche didn’t stand on principle in the game, which the Bengals won, 21-10. His offense led the league in points that year, and his defense, coached by Dick LeBeau, was good enough to shut the Bills down.
Of course, the Bills responded to this by implementing their speedy K-Gun offense, and went to four straight Super Bowls with it.
Would that we still lived in a world in which teams — even if they started off in response to things they couldn’t stop by complaining about them — eventually either learned to stop it, or adapted their own systems to it. Remember when Alabama head coach Nick Saban insisted that spread offenses would be the ruination of college football? That was especially fun after Saban and his staffs started using all those spread concepts, and basically became the NCAA’s RPO Central.
In the case of the Philadelphia Eagles ‘ Tush Push — that dastardly move that has been overwhelmingly successful for the defending Super Bowl champs — the league appears to be on the side of first whining, and then banning. At least that’s the current buzz in Indianapolis as the 2025 scouting combine gets underway.
On Monday, NFL EVP of football operations Troy Vincent told Judy Battista that one team has proposed a ban of the Tush Push. Vincent didn’t identify the team, but Tom Pelissero of the NFL Network reported later in the day that it was the Green Bay Packers who had proposed the ban.
Bills head coach Sean McDermott was the first of the coaches and general managers to speak at the combine — he did so Monday afternoon — and he was asked his thoughts.
“To me, there’s always been an injury risk with that play, and I’ve expressed that opinion for the last couple of years or so when it really started to come into play, the way it’s being used, especially a year ago,” McDermott said. “So I just feel like players’ safety and the health and safety of our players has to be at the top of our game, which it is. It’s just that play to me has always been a – or the way that the techniques that are used with that play to me have been potentially contrary to the health and safety of the players.
“Again, you have to go back, though, in fairness to the injury data on the play, but I just think the optics of it I’m not in love with.”
Well, let’s start with the optics as they pertain to the Buffalo Bills, and their own version of the Tush Push, affectionately known as the Snowplow. Because the Bills have spammed teams with that concept. Makes sense when you have a quarterback with Josh Allen ‘s physical dimensions, right? And exactly what are the specific health and safety concerns on these plays?
This will be a large topic of discussion throughout combine week when more coaches and general managers speak with the media, and Packers GM Brian Gutekunst is scheduled to lead off the proceedings Tuesday morning.
“[The] hip-drop [tackle] and the Tush Push were in the same conversation three years ago,” Vincent told Battista. “A year ago, we felt like let’s just focus in on the hip-drop tackle, and the Tush Push, just say, hey, the Philadelphia Eagles, they just do it better than everybody else. But there are some concerns. Our health and safety committee has laid that out with a brief conversation on the injury report. There’s some challenges, some concerns that they’ll share with the broader group tomorrow. But the Tush Push will become a topic of discussion moving into March.”
The NFL’s annual league meeting begins on March 30, which gives everyone involved a little over a month to decide how to handle this severe blight on the American way of life.
