Fantasy Football: NFL 'Tush Push' Ruling's Impact on Jalen Hurts, Saquon Barkley

The Philadelphia Eagles will push to become back-to-back champions during the NFL's 2025-26 season. They will be able to literally keep pushing as well.

The Athletic's Brooks Kubena and Dianna Russini reported Wednesday NFL owners voted against a proposal to ban the play popularly known as "the tush push."

The Eagles have mastered the play so wonderfully, the play is also sometimes referred to as "the brotherly shove," an obvious nod to Philadelphia's nickname -- the city of brotherly love.

Interestingly, 22 teams voted to ban the play. However, the league needed a three-quarters majority -- 24 teams to support the ban, which the Green Bay Packers proposed. The Packers fell two votes short of banning the play.

It will not be surprising if the NFL votes on a rule change for "the tush push" again soon because there are legitimate safety concerns with the play.

But there's also legitimate strategy with the play, and again, the Eagles perform it better than any other team.

The decision to keep the play will have major ramifications for fantasy football manager possessing running quarterbacks. But in particular, it will positively impact managers with Eagles signal-caller Jalen Hurts.

In 2024, Hurts scored 14 rushing touchdowns. Only three of them were longer than one yard.

On 10 of them, Hurts scored from the 1-yard line. On another score, Hurts fumbled on a rushing attempt from the 1-yard line but recovered the ball in the end zone for a touchdown.

Hurts pretty much scored the same percentage of his touchdowns from the 1-yard line in 2023 as well. Hurts tallied 11 of his 15 rushing scores from the 1-yard line during that season.

The Eagles use the "tush push" pretty much exclusively when they need one yard to gain. So, Hurts very likely wouldn't be scoring these touchdowns if the league elected to ban the play.

Instead, the scores could go to running back Saquon Barkley. The 2024 MVP candidate scored a career-high 13 touchdowns last season. But without the "tush push," managers have to figure at least half of Hurts' 1-yard touchdowns last season may have gone to Barkley instead.

Barkley has developed his own unique style of scoring touchdowns on goal-line plays during his career. Well, at least unique since Walter Payton; Barkley has often leaped over defenders to get into the end zone from a couple yards away.

But last season, with Hurts as his signal-caller, Barkley didn't score a single 1-yard touchdown.

SI on Fantasy's Matt Brandon summarized the fantasy football impact of the league's "tush push" vote on Hurts and Barkley best on April 1.

"Over the last two seasons, Jalen Hurts has tallied 29 rushing touchdowns, with a staggering 22 (76%) coming from the 1-yard line via the tush push. Should the NFL eliminate the play, those goal-line opportunities will shift directly to Barkley, inflating his value while substantially decreasing Hurts’ upside in 2025," wrote Brandon.

With the "tush push" remaining, though, fantasy managers don't have to worry about a change in Hurts' value. The quarterback is likely to continue racking up 1-yard scores, which makes him a candidate to be one of the top three "best ball" quarterbacks this season.

Barkley is negatively impacted the most due to the "tush push" vote. But Barkley will remain one of the best fantasy running back options in 2025 because of his ability to score from anywhere on the field.