Troy Vincent isn’t hiding behind corporate speak anymore. The NFL’s executive vice president of football operations acknowledged what anyone watching the Philadelphia Eagles this season already knows: officials cannot consistently call the Tush Push correctly, and the league’s own mistakes have altered games.
Troy Vincent Admits Eagles-Giants Error Changed the Game
“We got some work to do,” Vincent said to The Athletic during an open media session with reporters on Wednesday. “We’ll revisit that particular play and rule to see how the membership feels or not if they want to do anything about it.”
That’s a significant shift from where Vincent stood less than two years ago, when he told reporters to “not punish a team that strategically does it well.” Now, with a spring vote looming and 22 of 32 owners already in favor of a ban last May, the league’s top football operations executive is openly cataloging the play’s officiating failures.
Vincent didn’t speak in generalities. He pointed to the Week 8 Eagles-Giants matchup as a specific example of the league getting it wrong on the field.
“In particular, that Philly-Giants game early on, we blew the whistle too early,” Vincent said. “We stopped for progress, and the turnover occurred. That frankly changed the complexion in that game early on. We need to recognize those fouls, we need to call those fouls accurately, and we missed it.”
The incident Vincent referenced occurred in Week 8, when Kayvon Thibodeaux ripped the ball from Jalen Hurts’ hands during a Tush Push. Officials ruled forward progress had stopped before the fumble, negating what would have been a Giants turnover in a game tied 7-7. Two plays later, Hurts found Saquon Barkley for a touchdown. Philadelphia won 38-20.
READ MORE: NFL Players Call for League to Ban Eagles’ Tush Push Play: ‘It’s an Unfair Advantage,’ ‘Too Hard to Officiate’
The problem extends beyond one play. A USA Today analysis found the Eagles committed uncalled false starts on roughly one out of every six Tush Push attempts through Week 10 of the 2025 season. Line judges positioned at the sideline simply cannot detect guards jumping into the neutral zone or moving early when multiple bodies are compressed into the formation.
Vincent acknowledged the geometry working against officials: “Can you see that guard move? Obviously, the viewer is looking to say, how do they not pick that up? The guy’s in the neutral zone, but that line judge is pretty good ways away.”
NFL Play Has Evolved Beyond What Officials Can Track
Perhaps more telling than Vincent’s admission of past errors is his description of how teams have weaponized the formation itself. The Tush Push is no longer just a short-yardage conversion tool.
“Teams have become very creative,” Vincent said. “When you look at what teams are doing in that formation, they give you a look, and they’re not running the sneak.”
That evolution compounds the officiating challenge. Officials must determine pre-snap legality while also processing whether the play will even be a push. Meanwhile, the personnel involved have expanded. Early iterations featured centers and guards as the primary pushers. No, with tight ends lining up behind the quarterback, extending how long progress continues after initial contact.
“Now you got tight ends back there running, and progress is still moving forward,” Vincent said. “When you see full progress, when you blow the whistle, you blow it too early.”
RELATED: Tush Push Survives: NFL Rejects Ban, Keeping Eagles’ Controversial Play Alive
The NFL fell two votes short of banning the play last May when 22 of 32 teams voted in favor. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones told Yahoo Sports in October he expects another vote this spring. With Mark Murphy, the former Packers president who sponsored the original proposal and is now retired, the competition committee itself may need to champion any new rule change.
Stephen Jones, the Cowboys executive vice president who serves as co-chairman of the competition committee, said the group hasn’t committed to sponsoring a proposal but will revisit the data this spring.
Vincent stopped short of calling for a ban outright, noting “this is the membership, not the league office” that would make such a decision. But his willingness to document the play’s officiating failures in public suggests the league office won’t fight to preserve it either.
The Eagles ran the Tush Push to a touchdown on their opening drive of Super Bowl 59. They remain the gold standard at executing it, converting at a rate north of 90% in fourth-and-short situations since 2022. Whether that success survives the 2026 owners’ meetings may depend on how many more game-altering mistakes Vincent has to explain before then.
