Mike Pereira: League could look at QB push play after "ugliness" of NFC Championship Game

The Competition Committee could consider banning the quarterback push play after the Commanders' repeated offsides penalties in the NFC Championship Game, Fox rules analyst Mike Pereira said Thursday.

After the third consecutive foul, referee Shawn Hochuli warned the Commanders that officials had the power to award a touchdown. Pereira, who formerly worked as vice president of NFL Officiating before joining the network in 2010, called the sequence "ugly."

“I think it will be a conversation. . . . I think with the ugliness of that, they’ll take a further look at it," Pereira said.

The Eagles' success rate on the Brotherly Shove play continues to be near perfect, above 90 percent, since they began using it regularly in 2022 for short-yardage plays.

Some in the league, most recently Packers president Mark Murphy, have sought to ban the play.

But there hasn't been a strong enough push for the NFL to prohibit it, until perhaps now, when Hochuli threatened to invoke the palpably unfair acts rule in the fourth quarter two weeks ago. The rule has been on the books for decades, at least since 1942, but the league has never used it.

"To think that any play in a game led to what a referee could do, which is actually award a score without a play," Pereira said. "I mean when you get to that — called a ‘palpably unfair act,’ which I’d been waiting for 15 years to say on air. I was so excited. I almost spit it out right away. But I think with the ugliness of that, they'll take a further look at it. But again, it's going to evolve around injury data. If there's been injuries from it, there is a chance that it could get [eliminated].

"I think it’ll continue being looked at, [and] maybe at somewhere down the road making a change.”