What Rules Changed at the NFL Spring League Meetings?
This week, the owners of all 32 NFL franchises met together in Minneapolis for their annual Spring League Meeting. While there, the league owners discussed and debated numerous changes and additions to the upcoming 2025 NFL season and beyond. For example, the owners voted unanimously to allow NFL players to try out for the upcoming 2028 Olympics flag football team, as well as adding a new “Protector of the Year” award for the league’s best lineman. However, the entire football world’s eyes were on Minneapolis to see how the owners would vote on changes to the rules of the game.
The single hottest issue that the owners faced this week was voting on whether the Tush Push play would be banned. After failing to come to a consensus on what to do with the controversial play back in April, the owners tabled the discussion for the Spring League Meeting. It seems that just enough of the owners came to their senses about the play. The Packers-led initiative to ban the play only received 22 of the 24 total votes needed to amend the rules, meaning the QB-sneak-on-steroids the Eagles made famous will still be with us, at least for the 2025 season.
Meanwhile, another proposed rule change that would have seriously changed the league didn’t even make it to a vote. The Lions had suggested a change to playoff seeding that would have seen all playoff teams that survived the Wild Card Round reseeded based on their regular-season record. This would mean that a 13-4 team that didn’t win their division wouldn’t have to play away from home against a 10-7 team that did win their division, at least, after the first round of playoffs. Detroit withdrew the proposal before any voting began on it. With the current playoff rules still heavily favoring divisional champions, regular-season matchups between divisional rivals remain as important as ever.
The only rule that did get changed this week had to do with slightly amending onside kick rules. Last year, a team could only declare an onside kick when trailing in the fourth quarter. With the new rule, teams can declare an onside kick at any point in the game when they are trailing. The ball will also be initially placed a yard backwards, at the 34-yard line instead of the 35-yard line. Onside kicks are very rarely completed successfully, but this rule change may slightly increase the number of them attempted this season. I’m sure that the Kansas City Chiefs would have liked to have at least tried one while being slaughtered 34-6 in the last minute of the third quarter in Super Bowl LIX.
