How the Tush Push Took Over Football
And why the blowback may be (don't) pushing it
Whether you call it the Tush Push or the Brotherly Shove, if you watch football, you’ve probably seen it by now. If you were watching Sunday Night Football last weekend, then you saw the Eagles run it a few times. If you were watching Thursday Night football last night, then you might’ve wondered why the Bills didn’t run it more than they did. It looks like this:
The Eagles are the gold standard. They’re basically automatic in short-yardage situations with this little steamroller under their belt.
When the Kansas State (Copy)Wildcats do it against Texas A&M, it’s a lot like what I imagine an atom collapsing must look like:
And when some deftly coached high schoolers do it, it looks like this:
Get a load of #78 there on the far left. Poor kid. You can almost hear him saying, “Man. Fuck this.”
You would be too on the other end of this thing. It’s not hard to see why the play is pretty popular at every level these days. It works!
It works so well that the NFL weighed a rule to ban it this offseason. As if the sports fans of Philadelphia needed more Us Against The World fuel. Don’t you see that’s what they want?! Wake up!
When I watch the Push/Shove, though, what I (and anyone else who’s ever watched a rugby game) see is this:
That’s another sport, people.
In fact, it’s the sport that birthed the first sport, which I say to underline that this has been available to football coaches for a very long time now. How is it that Nick Sirianni and the Eagles were the first ones to figure this out?
Unclear, but a lot of people seem to think the Tush Push shouldn’t exist. I’ve seen the word “abomination” tossed around a lot. The main cases against seem to be:
It’s so automatic that it takes suspense out of a usually tense part of the game, and…
It’s not safe.
The latter is awfully rich, given the sport we’re talking about. I’m all for eliminating unnecessary collisions, but you can’t do a very good job convincing me that this is more dangerous than the high-speed crashes happening on every other play.
At least there’s not a running start here. Nobody had a problem with the old QB sneak, much less the HB dive. So why now?
You’re gonna have to change a lot more than that if safety is really your primary concern, and one thing I can confidently say about the NFL is… it isn’t.
Thou Doth Protest
So let’s go back to the first thing. Is it too easy?
Well, it is for the Eagles. They’ve converted it at an astounding rate. In 37 regular-season attempts since the start of the 2022 season, they’ve converted on 34, good for about a 92% success rate (thanks as always, ESPN Stats & Info).
Jalen Hurts, the swarthier Kelce brother, and co. have a unique affinity for this. They’ve got a physically strong quarterback and an outstanding O-line. They get low and they go through whoever’s in front of them.
Nobody runs it quite as much — the Bills were second, with 12 — but they made it a clean 100%. So did the Bears and Steelers, with smaller sample sizes of 7 and 6.
That suggests that most of the league hasn’t really adopted this in any significant fashion, but the ones that have figured it out have done so to great effect. That just isn’t a big group.
In that sense, it kind of sounds like… any other play? Which, for me, chop blocks the argument that this is a top priority to legislate around.
But, okay. We’re realists, right? If the numbers bear out an emerging problem, and I think you could make that case, then the NFL’s “competition committee” (lol) will have to take another look in the offseason. I might suggest that they first try and explain what a catch is, or stop using a literal chain gang to measure out increments of 10 yards, but hey. Priorities.
They will be under yet more pressure to do something about this, and I’d place a hefty futures bet on this not being a thing come next year. Make this available to me, FanDuel — I dare you.
Since there’s a real possibility that the Eagles make it back to the Super Bowl again, though, the Brotherly Shove could have one more big moment yet. Let’s just hope it’s not a full-on rematch of the last one. I’m not sure America can handle another Kelce Bowl under these new circumstances.
Rugby Rant
As long as we’re on this, while I’m obviously biased, everybody keeps using “rugby play” as a pejorative, and doing so like it goes without saying. Hey! We’re people too!
Which leads me to my favorite part. The rant.
‘Cause you know what I say? I say maybe football could use a little more rugby in the mix. (Disclaimer: this may offend my fellow Americans.)
1.) The NFL is home to a shocking number of missed tackles from guys trying to launch themselves at the ball carrier like an armless missile. Pete Carroll once embraced rugby-style tackling in the Legion of Boom days, and those guys — especially Kam Chancellor — still brought it. Teach defensive backs how to wrap! Somebody. Please. It’s a far more impactful safety innovation than anything discussed above.
2.) The read option isn’t a particularly effective NFL offense, much less the triple option. We’ve seen that proven out over the years. But I’m always surprised that nobody runs anything with a secondary pitch. One of the basic building blocks of offense in rugby is finding and exploiting 2-on-1’s, like so:
2A.) You try and draw defenders into the middle of the pitch (fine, field) such that you isolate that last defender, force him to commit to the ballcarrier, and pass it once more outside for the score.
If you tried to run this in football — on a bubble screen, let’s say — then you’d still have blockers ahead of you, but how about you just send another player on a jet sweep around the first receiver? The guy who passed the ball could then block too. It’s another element for defenders to account for, and while I can’t promise it’d take the league by storm, it’s not hard to picture some degree of surprise factor working out here in small doses.
3.) I’m stretching for a third, as I’m saving my diatribe on how dumb the extra point is for another day, though I can offer a quick preview. Extra points are dumb.
No, my actual third one is the league’s penchant for baseless celebrations, which you just don’t see in rugby. I was never one of those people who got all worked up when guys danced in the end zone — let the men dance, folks — but there is something distinctly hilarious about how players will pop up after the most mundane play and absolutely lose their shit. I’m sorry to be picking on defensive backs here again, but the most egregious and funny examples of this tend to be guys making a super dramatic “incomplete” motion after the quarterback sails the ball out of bounds, a misfire he obviously had nothing to do with. If anyone ever makes the mistake of letting me coach a football team, that’s gonna be among my first notes. Before celebrating an accomplishment, make sure you have one.
Aaaaanyways. This concludes the rant, but for those curious, the Rugby World Cup Final is tomorrow at 3:00pm ET.
South Africa, the defending champions, will play New Zealand, history’s most decorated side, to decide this tournament and who will have the most modern championships to their name.
Fair warning, though — you might see a “rugby play” or two, so do be careful.
Also, This
Quite a World Series matchup, huh? Both these teams lost 100+ games just two years ago, and here they are. If anyone was wondering, I’m still not swayed that this is a bad thing, and I remain unsure why so many people are (besides the league office, who undoubtedly would’ve preferred the Houston-Philadelphia redux). March Madness has been the comp, but these aren’t even single-elimination games they’re playing. Higher seeds are losing series, fair and square. If we want the best teams playing for the title, then they’re gonna have to play like it. I continue to not get this, but happy to be convinced otherwise if someone wants to let me know why I’m wrong.
Related point: happy trails to Dusty Baker, who retired this week at the ripe old age of 74. Seeing him finally get one was, for most, the only silver lining to seeing the Astros back on the mountaintop last year. The man debuted for the Braves in 1968, next to some guy named Hank Aaron. He’s been managing major league clubs since ‘93. He took some gut punches, most notably the ‘03 Steve Bartman Cubs, and he won’t be remembered as the best of all time or anything. But the game will miss him, and so will I.
Giannis Antetokounmpo is staying put in Milwaukee, at least in theory, after signing a 3-year extension this week. This is what the Bucks were after in trading for Dame, and it worked. The sport benefits from true franchise players, so I hope he sticks around.
Rugby for life!