Former NFL Referee Urges League To Make Massive Rule Change Once & For All

This article was originally published on Total Pro Sports.

On Sunday, Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills may have given us the greatest Tush Push of all time.

With just inches left to go, the Bills’ offensive line pretty much carried Allen nine yards, all the way to the half-yard line. It was initially ruled a touchdown, although the call was reversed upon review.

The fact that the players literally carried Allen for nearly ten yards didn’t go unnoticed. That’s why former NFL referee Terry McAulay, who serves as a rule expert for NBC, just couldn’t take it anymore.

With that in mind, he took to social media to urge the league to do something about it:

“I very much hope the NFL Competition Committee addresses this in the off-season. This just cannot be a legal play any more. Now, only pulling a runner is illegal. All pushing, pulling, or lifting a runner by a teammate should be illegal,” he wrote on X.

The Tush Push has been a talking point in league meetings for several years now. However, there has been no resolution to make it illegal. Ironically, the Buffalo Bills were one of the harshest advocates to ban the play.

Nick Sirianni Knows Teams Are Getting Better At Stopping The Tush Push

Of course, even if the league doesn’t do anything directly to prevent this play, other teams might still find a way. This is a copycat league, and once someone is able to crack the code, it will be just a matter of time before everybody else replicates it.

As a matter of fact, the Eagles’ success rate with this play has dropped drastically over the years. It was 92.2 percent in 2023, then 81.4 percent in 2024, and is now down all the way to 65.4.

That’s why even head coach Nick Sirianni had to admit that the rest of the league may have caught up to it:

“That play has been really successful for us for a couple years now,” Sirianni said, per The Athletic. “Teams are doing a good job adjusting. Now it’s our job as coaches to do our part and adjust there as well. But that’s kind of the fun part of this league, that there’s ebbs and flows with this. Offenses or defenses succeed at something, the other side catches up, and then you have to adjust again.”

At the end of the day, it would be unfair and inaccurate to say that the Tush Push is the only reason why the Eagles have been so dominant lately. Then again, it’ll be interesting to see how they fare once their offensive line keeps declining or the league bans the play once and for all.