A Tush Push ban in the NFL would be such a loser move

his is For The Win’s daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Did a friend recommend or forward this to you? If so, subscribe here. Have feedback? Leave your questions, comments and concerns through this brief reader survey! Now, here’s Mike Sykes.

Good morning, Winners! Welcome back to the Morning Win. It looks like the NFL is about to make a serious run at finally banning the tush push.

According to reporting from ESPN's Kalyn Kahler, the proposal to ban the play initially pushed forward by the Green Bay Packers has support within the NFL's competition committee. It's not clear that the proposal has the 24 votes necessary to move forward on it, but it does seem to be clear that more teams are open to the idea that the play needs to be banned. Why? The two reasons teams are citing are safety and pace of play.

I'm here to tell you that those two reasons are nonsense.

Supporters are citing safety. But the tush push hasn't proven to be more unsafe than any regular NFL play. No team has presented any injury data backing up any concern they might have. Any discussion about injuries is purely anecdotal at this point, which, after three full seasons of running the play, doesn't feel like it should hold any weight.

But, hey. What do I know?

Then there's the pace of play argument. Teams question if the fans want to see the play run "50 times down the field," Kahler writes. But that doesn't happen. It's generally only used by two teams — the Bills and Eagles. And, according to ESPN, it was only run 101 times out of 35,414 plays run last season. That certainly doesn't sound like a sample that could impact the overall pace of the game.

You could argue that the pace issue arose in the NFC Championship game when the Eagles continuously ran the play against the Commanders on the goal line. The defense tried to time the snap to stop the play over and over again but couldn't. Yes, it's fair to describe that as a dumpster fire. But that wasn't the play's fault — that was more about the Commanders' ineptitude.

And that's kind of what this all comes down to. What's happening here is so obvious. It's been three years now and the league still hasn't figured out how to stop the tush push. The real problem is that not everybody is as good at doing it. Teams (like the Packers!) have tried and failed to do their own versions.

Now, to be clear, not every team is for banning this. Some coaches, like Tampa Bay's Todd Bowles and the Jets' Aaron Glenn are more interested in trying to stop the play than to ban it. Good on them. It's nice to see people actually interested in doing their jobs.

NICK SIRIANNI HAS 3 VOTES: He said the three head coaches the tush push has created better vote in favor of it

As for everyone else? Well, you know how the saying goes. If you can't beat them, join them. If you're not good enough to join them, just ban it. That's the solution we've landed upon here.

That's wack.

Never change, Detroit

The Pistons and Timberwolves got into one of the biggest NBA brawls we've seen in years on Sunday night. Five players and two coaches were ejected from the game. At the center of it all? Donte DiVincenzo and — you guessed it — Isaiah Stewart.

This didn't rise to Malice at the Palice levels, but it was certainly Lakers-Rockets 2018 levels of malicious. It also spilled into the crowd a bit, which is never good. Well, not good for the NBA. It's good for us because we get to watch videos from angles like this:

Shoutout to phone cameras.

Surely, there will be plenty of suspensions on both sides from this. I'm not even really sure what actually happened here. The game was chippy, sure. But fight chippy? That's surprising.

There's something about the Detroit Pistons, man. No matter who is on that team, no matter where they came from, they always just seem to be ready to fight.

Gotta love the mentality.

Dawn Staley is inevitable

Thanos has this one line in Avengers: Endgame that has refused to leave my mind since the very moment I heard it for the first time.

"You couldn't live with your own failure," He told the Avengers. "Where did that bring you? Back to me."

That line is small, but it's so significant. In just a few words, Thanos reminds us what's at stake in the final battle of that movie. He's reminding the Avengers that he'd beaten them before and, had they'd just been able to accept that, they wouldn't need to face him again.

Thanos is Dawn Staley to me. Or, uh, Dawn Staley is Thanos. Whatever. You get what I'm saying.

She's inevitable. South Carolina is inevitable. No matter what other teams do, she always figures them out over and over again. It happened to Maryland on Friday. It happened to Duke on Sunday. It just keeps happening over and over again until, whoops, South Carolina just made its 5th straight Final Four appearance.

Dominance, folks. This is what it looks like.

Quick hits: The Torpedo bat trend ... Audi Crooks ain't going anywhere ... and more

— The Torpedo Bat homer barrage from the Yankees has the rest of baseball putting in orders. Charles Curtis has more.

— Audi Crooks is staying at Iowa State, folks. Meg Hall has more.

— Mary Clarke has more on the last time every No. 1 seed made the men's NCAA tournament's Final Four.

— Ryne Nelson hitting for himself was amazing. Andrew Joseph has more.

— Ernie Johsnon roasting Charles Barkley will never get old. Robert Zeglinski has more.

— Kim Mulkey is clearly not happy about losing in the Elite 8. Sheesh.

That's a wrap, folks. Thanks for reading. Peace.

-Sykes ✌️