Cowboys owner Jerry Jones voted in favor of the rule that would have banned the Eagles’ tush push, but he admitted that he’s not sure himself whether he really thinks the play should be taken out of the game, or whether he just doesn’t want the Eagles to have such an effective play in their arsenal.
“Any play that’s out of the ordinary gets some extra scrutiny just because of the competition in there,” Jones said. “Here we are, the world champion is the main focus of the tush push, and here we are debating it, and having to decide. I thought, am I really against the tush push, or just don’t want Philadelphia to have an edge?”
Asked which it is, a principled opposition to the play or just wanting to stop a division rival, Jones answered, “I don’t know. I flip flop.”
Jones is saying out loud what others in the NFL won’t admit, that part of the opposition to the tush push is unrelated to the merits of the play. Instead, it’s about one particular team doing that play very well, and that one team winning the Super Bowl, and other teams wanting to ban the play to take away something that the best team in the league is doing better than everyone else.
Ultimately, Jones and his allies mustered only 22 votes to change the rule, and changing any rule in the NFL requires 24 votes. The Eagles were joined by nine other teams that didn’t think it was fair to take away one play just because one team does it so well.
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