Acme Packing Company
You people don’t even know what a scrum is.
The Green Bay Packers submitted a request to the league to ban the famous Philadelphia “Tush Push,” or for those who do not like referring to the human posterior, the “Brotherly Shove.” This struck many, including me, as counterproductive, until Tex pointed out correctly that the Packers’ use of tight end Tucker Kraft on sneaks does not actually fit the strict definition of the Tush Push, and so would not be impacted. (Seriously, read more here.)
But whether the Kraft play is a Tush Push, or just a Krafty (ha!) variation, the league SHOULD NOT BAN THIS. The Tush Push is, fundamentally, a rugby scrum, or as close to a rugby scrum as the NFL gets outside of fumble recoveries, and we don’t need to drive American Gridiron Football any further away from its origins than we already have. This sport used to mean something. Do you even know what football is all about? Why do people put their bodies on the line to pick up abstract yardage in the first place? Why do we talk about defending our house when we’re just playing a game?
I used to believe that football and soccer shared a common ancestor and while I don’t think the answer is necessarily definitive (and at some point, you can definitely trace all sports back to the concept of “hey, a ball”), I believe the consensus is now that the ancient ancestors of soccer and football grew up together in parallel. This makes sense if you think about it, as once you have “a ball,” you basically have three options: Use your hands on the ball (football, rugby), kick the ball (soccer) and hit the ball with a stick (baseball, cricket, golf, tennis). We do know that football and rugby share a common ancestor, which is probably why football still has some of its wackier rules, like, well, kicking, and especially the fair catch, and the fair catch kick. And a few other things.
Football and rugby also have scrums. In rugby, play restarts after minor infringements with a scrum, while modern offensive line v. defensive line blocking in American football is a modified scrum, although there are so many blocking rules in the NFL, it diverges further every year. This brings us to the Tush Push, the last real remaining scrum. Banning it, instead of learning how to stop it and in fact embracing it, would be embarrassing. Our players already play in Capri pants, we should not subject them to further indignities. And this is precisely how sports slowly diverge from each other over time in the first place! If these NFL trends continue, in a decade or two, the NFL will find themselves competing with “traditional football,” which will feature kickoff returns, tushes being pushed, huge mustachioed coaches, and the ability to tackle quarterbacks. Hip-drop tackles will be common, and points will never be emphasized in the offseason.
Honestly, this is a bridge too...
