NEW YORK -- Officiating the famed tush push play remains a challenge for the league office.
Vice president of football operations Troy Vincent said Tuesday that the play is not a frequent topic of discussion at league headquarters but acknowledged it's "very difficult to officiate in real time" despite intensified efforts to spot potential false starts in recent weeks.
Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Eagles continue running their signature play to near-perfection.
"When the guard is in the neutral zone or someone else is in the neutral zone, it's really hard for that line judge to identify based on what he's looking at down the line of scrimmage," said Vincent from the NFL's fall meeting at the InterContinental New York. "At the end of the day, there's a team that still does it well. And we've seen other people have versions of it. But from an officiating standpoint, we're gonna try to get better at identifying when someone is in the neutral zone or when someone leaves a little early."
In Week 3, the NFL instructed officials to call the controversial play "tight" going forward after the Eagles should have been flagged for at least one false start in a Week 2 win over the Kansas City Chiefs. An officiating training tape distributed to all 32 teams showed Philadelphia running the quarterback sneak on third-and-short late in the eventual 20-17 win over the Chiefs. After that game, Chiefs head coach Andy Reid told reporters that Philadelphia "got off a little early on" multiple quarterback sneaks.
"Anytime we have this situation we're in short yardage, we know we want to make sure that we officiate these plays -- the offensive team has to be perfect in every aspect," NFL vice president of officiating training and development Ramon George said, according to the Washington Post. "We want to officiate it tight. We want to be black and white and be as tight as we can be when we get into this situation where teams are in the bunch position and we have to officiate them being onsides, movement early.
"Prior to the snap, looks like we have movement by the right guard. We also have movement coming across from the defensive side. This is a very hard play to officiate. I get it."
The NFL did penalize a team for false-starting on a tush-push-style play -- the Pittsburgh Steelers on "Thursday Night Football" last week. The previous Thursday, the Eagles ran the play four straight times on their way into the end zone.
Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni has long equated the Eagles' masterful running of the play to having a first-and-9 advantage every fresh set of downs, instead of the customary first-and-10.
In May, NFL owners voted on whether to ban the pushing of a player from behind but did not garner the majority vote (at least 24 of 32). It has not been determined whether a team will craft a new proposal this offseason to trigger another vote.
