But the play is bothering enough people that the second person said there were multiple teams that listed the two-cheek sneak as a top-three most important issue on the competition committee survey that teams submit to the league office following the Super Bowl. One team staffer told me that their team put the push sneak on their three-item list, citing the play’s nearly automatic, predictable result as the reason why it isn’t “good for the game.” He compared it to owners voting to increase the difficulty of the extra point by moving the kick back from the 2-yard-line to the 15-yard-line.

Pushing an offensive teammate has been legal in the NFL since 2005, when the league clarified blocking rules to help officials with their judgments in games. The second person briefed on the matter said when the league removed the language that prohibited pushing, it never anticipated the unintended consequence that teams would design plays around pushing players forward. And no team has schemed up the push quite like the 2022 Eagles did, with 41 sneaks for a 90.5 percent conversion rate. By season’s end, the Bills, Ravens and Bengals had all lined up in a push formation or had run a variation of the push themselves. …

Several NFL club staffers I spoke to argued that getting to 24 votes to ban pushing on sneaks will be challenging.

[It’s legal, but it’s a bit lame, especially given the disadvantage it creates for defenses. A few times this season, teams went to two-point plays and tried to get defenses to jump so that the ball would be set at the 1-yard line and they could do the two-cheek sneak. I don’t know if there’s a legit injury risk yet, but eventually the play will force defensive backs to turn themselves into ballistic missiles to defend against it. The NFL should return to the pre-2005 no-pushing rule, especially given all of the other rule advantages given to offenses. — Ed]