The Tush Push Tide is Turning

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One of the most amusing aspects of NFL discourse is the debatable nature of what constitutes “a football play.”

You would not think that would be a hard thing to define, and I see a lot of people lately confidently declaring what is and is not “a football play,” mainly with respect to the infamous Tush Push.

And before we get started, let none of this be confused with “a football move,” a much-derided concept that nonetheless looms large in the actual rules to the game and often comes up when we’re trying to figure out whether something was a catch. Don’t get me started on the catch thing. We don’t have time.

Your mileage may vary here, but the two poles of Tush Push discourse are, roughly:

1.) It’s an unstoppable trump card for a team that’s perfected an edge in an extremely competitive league where any advantage can and should be taken, or;

2.) It’s a total bummer that removes a lot of suspense from a televised sport where the overall purpose is entertainment.

You’ll have to decide for yourself where you fall on that spectrum. I have generally been more in the 1 camp, though I can see where the 2ers are coming from. For me, that’s been the best case against.

I’m not nearly as convinced by the other arguments I keep seeing lately, as buzz renews around banning the play. And I’m not quite convinced that that’s going to happen either, but the more it gets discussed like this — and the more you have truly egregious false starts accompanying the play — it gets a little harder to defend. Philosophically, that is. Teams can’t defend it on the field already, although — man. They’re getting creative.

Those other arguments include the safety angle, and while I’m not going to sit here and tell you that it’s good for everybody’s spine, it’s still pretty obviously not the most dangerous play on a football field.

Yeah, they’re piling on top of each other, and someone’s going to get seriously hurt in there at some point. But you’re joking if you think it’s significantly more dangerous than the full-speed collisions that happen in this sport on every other play. So I just generally think that the safety card is thus a difficult one to play in football at all.

The other one is a fairness angle, which I kinda don’t buy either. Any team could do this in theory. The Eagles don’t have a patent, though they should probably invest in that trademark. The other teams just don’t do it as well. The fact that they’re automatic with it isn’t evidence of preferential treatment. They’re the ones who figured this out.

But my least favorite case, which I’ve seen a lot lately, is the “It’s not a football play” angle. To which I say: Okay. What is?

No, seriously. Go ahead. I’ll wait. Just stop me when you get to the sheer existence of the longsnapper. This sport is so fucking specific and specialized that we have a dude called a longsnapper who… snaps the ball long. And who does he snap it to?

The punter, usually. A guy who doesn’t play football except for the 4-5 times a game he’s called out to kick it down the field. His only other job, typically, is to hold the ball when another (comparatively) scrawny fella comes out to kick the ball for a field goal instead. Those are the kicks. We have two different guys who kick. Oh, and they also kick it for extra points, which remains one of the dumbest time-wasters in all of sports.

Is a field goal “a football play”? Apparently. Sure. I’ve said my piece on this before, and everything I wrote then, I still think now.

My answer would be no. At least not in the “spirit of the game” sense that I think most of the people talking football play vs. not a football play mean it. I think we can discern that from the fact that those players — i.e. longsnappers, punters, and kickers — quite literally do not play at any other point of the game.

At least the Tush Push crew has other responsibilities. At least that’s basically still just a QB sneak with a little bit of rugby maul mixed in for funsies.

The point being: it strains credulity for me to see people saying, in all seriousness, that there is even such thing as a football play. The rules to this game are a mess. They don’t lend themselves to puritanism.

As a corollary, I watched an unusual play in a college game on Saturday between Auburn and Oklahoma. Early in the 2nd quarter, Oklahoma went up 10-3 on a wide-open 28-yard touchdown pass. It was so very open that, on the broadcast, it wasn’t clear how it was even possible for the coverage to be that bad. No one on Auburn was within 10 yards of the receiver.

It’s one thing if a guy runs a go route past the safety on a blown coverage. It’s another when the other team isn’t — to slightly adapt the parlance — playing football anymore. How did that happen?

Well, the receiver pretended he was leaving the game on a substitution, and when the defense saw that he was heading off the field, they didn’t send a cornerback over there to mark him.

Which is only natural, right? You should probably focus on the guys who are actually on the field. Which is why it’s technically against the rules to do that. Were the officiating crew more on top of it, they’d have called back the touchdown, hit Oklahoma with a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, and all would’ve been right in the world.

Which isn’t what happened, of course. Oklahoma won by a touchdown. Guess that’s that.

Is that a football play? Is it more or less of a football play than the Tush Push? I don’t know, man! Someone tell me. Make it make sense.

I like football. But I find it more infuriating than any other sport in terms of the vagaries of what is and is not permissible within the bounds of the game. And people get mad about it too. They get righteous. I don’t see much room for that, but hey. Guess that’s just me.

I think the Tush Push is boring too, for what it’s worth. Again, I say — that’s the case against. It’s not exciting! It’s “cheap” or whatever. Just say that then. Point out the actual problems with it, not the invented ones. Then maybe you’ll be onto something.

🏀 The Fred Van Vleet news is a devastating hit to the Houston Rockets’ title odds. I’ve heard a lot of people I respect say that this eliminates them on arrival as any kind of legitimate title contender. I ever so slightly wonder about that.

⚾ Cal Raleigh going for 60 dingers is absolutely bonkers. Bonkers to the point where he is now the betting favorite for AL MVP. Which, given the way Aaron Judge is and has been playing for basically four years now, is… double bonkers. He plays catcher, folks! And like, actually does it! He’s a catcher. This is crazy. Go Mariners.

📚 My reading pace has slowed a bit since starting a new job last month, so I apologize in advance should my Book Corner takes start running low. Still ahead for now, though, so let me quickly note a book called Beasts of a Little Land by Juhea Kim. It draws a natural comparison to Pachinko, another multi-generational epic set among the Korean independence movement and delving into the brutality of the Japanese colonial era. So if you liked that, you’ll probably like this, though it differs in style; I liked the elements of Beasts of a Little Land that veered into fable. That worked on me in much the same way that The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht did. Maybe I’m just a sucker for that sort of thing. Anyways.

📚 I also finished The Natural, which I only shouted out early last week on account of Robert Redford’s passing. There are several passages that are hard to read, in the way that a book written in 1952 about a guy pursuing a woman who isn’t interested in him can give you the same kind of cringy feeling you’ll get watching some of the older Bond movies. Sad to report that Roy Hobbs is a little creepy. That aside, though, there’s something beautifully lyrical about the way Malamud writes it, and especially how it describes the ups and downs of baseball.