The Eagles seem to be the only team in the NFL that can execute the “tush push.”
The Patriots, Chargers and Giants all tried it this weekend. None succeeded, with two Giants getting hurt in the process. Micah Parsons, arguably the best defensive player in the NFL, calls it a “cheat code.” Some teams don’t even want the play to be legal.
So, why is Philly so good at running it, whereas it hurts, literally, other teams? It’s actually quite simple.
“I think that we spend more time, frankly, coaching the play up from a technical standpoint,” Eagles center Jason Kelce said Wednesday in his weekly appearance on the 94WIP Morning Show.
The play is a controversial one. It’s a quarterback sneak in which players push the quarterback from behind to get him across the goal line or first down marker. Philly has had great success with it for a combination of factors.
For one, the Eagles have a great offensive line. They also boast a quarterback in Jalen Hurts who is one of the most powerful runners at his position. They’re also technical about it, as Kelce mentioned, treating the play as “organized mass.”
“Most teams don’t coach quarterback sneaks. They put it in on short-yardage, maybe you discuss it briefly in like a meeting, but there’s not a lot of detail put into it,” Kelce said. “... You can’t stop it if it’s organized properly.
“I think that the more you coach it up, the more detail there is, the more organized it is. The whole job of the offense or the defense is who can organize the most, or who can unorganize the other team most. That’s the other thing, we’ve run it so many times at this point too, you’re not going to rep it live in practice. So a lot of these times, the first time these teams are running it are live in games, and they don’t really understand the proper way to do it.
“Even when we’re doing it with a new guy in, it usually takes that guy two or three times of running it before he’s like ‘OK, now I’m figuring this out.’ And then, as we know, it’s only 92 percent, you’re going to get stopped every once in a while. Defenses are doing a much better job at defending it, they’ve clearly put a lot of time and effort into stopping this play this offseason, they knew they were going to have to deal with it.
“The Commanders, for years, quite frankly, the quarterback sneak has been almost automatic against them. We’ve absolutely converted every single one of them.”