Despite the best efforts of the Green Bay Packers, the Philadelphia Eagles’ patented Tush Push technique is set to return for the 2025 regular season. Ironically enough, the final vote on the Packers’ proposal to ban the play proved to be 22-10, the same result as their Wild Card loss to Philadelphia.
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While the league’s vote to uphold the play certainly rubbed an extra bit of salt in the wounds of Green Bay, many found their faux cries of “player safety” to be disingenuous at best, resulting in little to no sympathy from the NFL populace.
According to the Eagles’ star offensive tackle, Lane Johnson, if the guys in the trenches aren’t concerned, then no one should be.
“I think that probably the most important voices are going to be the center, the two guards, and the two defensive tackles that are right there in the middle, because they are usually at the bottom of the pile every time. So if there was a voice to be heard, I would say it was theirs….We got a lot of heavy slaughters, Rich,” Johnson said on the Rich Eisen Show.
Now that the Tush Push has had its existence as a legitimate strategy confirmed by the higher ups, Philadelphia figures to be going all in on the rugby-style play. Considering that the franchise went as far as to seek out the advice of Richie Gray, a former Scottish rugby union player and current coach, to help ensure that the play is executed to perfection, the “Brotherly Shove” now stands as the most recent point of comparison between the two sports.
Meanwhile, Johnson admitted that the franchise has received “a lot of input” on the play throughout the past year, noting that Gray, in particular, has given the team a helpful amount of insight in regards to how opposing defenses may attempt to stop the play. As far as outright attempt to ban the technique is concerned, Johnson suggested that had the ban gone through, Philadelphia wouldn’t have been the only franchise to suffer from the rule change.
Nevertheless, he was still surprised by the audacity of the attempt itself.
“If it was eliminated, it wasn’t going to hurt just us. There’s other teams, like the Bills, who are really good at it, and there’s teams that will eventually get good at it… As somebody that’s involved in the play, I never thought that this would grow to what it has become… It turns into a mess towards the end of the whistle, but that’s what it takes.”
While there’s no guarantee that there won’t be another vote to ban the play in the future, the Tush Push remains safe for now. Seeing as the Eagles are now attempting to defend their status as world champions, it would have no doubt been controversial to see them be stripped of their most efficient technique.
Then again, the play itself has proven to be one of the most polarizing calls in recent memory, toying with both the rule book and defenders. Much like the city of Philadelphia itself, the Tush Push may not be perfect, and it may not be pretty, but it will go down in history, for better or worse.
