There have been many plays that define a great team—whether rightly or not. The Kansas City Chiefs of Hank Stram had the “65 Toss Power Trap,” Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers had the “Packers Sweep,” and the 1998 Minnesota Vikings had the Randy Moss “screw it, he’s down there somewhere” deep ball. And now, the Philadelphia Eagles of the 2020s have added their own to the list: the “Tush Push.”
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In a nod to the City of Brotherly Love that uses the play, it has also been referred to as the “Brotherly Shove.” It’s a superbly efficient short-yardage play in which their 600-pound squatting QB, Jalen Hurts, does a QB sneak—only he’s aided by a tight end and a running back, who give him an extra push from behind. Not to mention the 1,000+ pounds of offensive lineman in front of them.
The play is nearly unstoppable when the Eagles employ it, which is why their competitors are trying to outlaw it. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Green Bay Packers put forth a proposal to ban the “Tush Push” moving forward. That means it will be discussed at this year’s Annual League Meetings. Reacting to the news, Philly head coach Nick Sirianni said he felt “insulted” by Green Bay’s move.
“Insulted because, we work hard at that thing. And it’s like, ‘It’s automatic!’ Well, it’s automatic because of the work that’s put in, and because of the players we have that are performing it. It’s not automatic throughout the entire league, right?” Sirianni said on Pardon My Take.
Then, Sirianni really put his point into perspective by making a shrewd comparison between Philly’s dominance with the Tush Push play and Steph Curry’s otherworldly ability to shoot three-pointers.
“‘Okay, well, Steph Curry shouldn’t be allowed to shoot threes. Only in the 4th quarter can Steph Curry shoot threes.’ Like, what are we talking about? We can’t just make a rule up because it’s benefitting one team and everywhere else it’s not quite as good. We saw it in one of the Championship Games, one of the teams got stuffed on it, and turnover on downs and game over.”
Curry’s three-point shooting is unmatched in the NBA. Over the last five years, he has hit 1,479 threes, 23 percent more than the next-best guy. He’s done so while shooting at a .406 percent clip, which is the best among the 30 players with 2,000+ three-point attempts during that span.
But no one is telling the Golden Boy to stop shooting threes just because he’s dominant. Instead, the rest of the NBA (and the basketball world at large) simply adopted his tactic and attempted to use it to their own advantage. Three-point shots now dominate the landscape of the NBA.
Some teams like the Packers are whining about the team that booted them from the playoffs. Others have embraced the new tactic as they did in the NBA. From peewee football to the pros, teams other than the Eagles are giving the Tush Push a shot, with varying levels of success. The sincerest form of flattery is imitation, and Philly is getting imitated all over the nation.
“The compliment that I do feel from it is that it’s stretched to every portion of football. It’s showed in college football, pro football, high school football, peewee football. My son scored on it this year, that was awesome.”
The Buffalo Bills are the team that has probably embraced it the most apart from the Eagles. That’s because they’ve got a 6’5″, 240-pound behemoth at QB. But even still, they tried the play several times in the AFC Championship Game Sirianni was referring to. They were stuffed both times. We could understand the outcry over the play if any team that tried it automatically got a first down, but that is clearly not the case.
Philadelphia is able to dominate with the play because they train for it hard and they have the right personnel to get it done. The Bills aren’t built perfectly for the play like the Eagles. But, with Allen back there, they’ve had a lot of success too.
From 2022 to 2024, the Bills and Eagles ran the Tush Push 163 times—more than the rest of the league combined. According to ESPN research, the Bills and Eagles scored or got a first down on 87 percent of those plays. The rest of the league saw a Tush Push success rate of just 71 percent.
The whole argument that the play is dangerous for players doesn’t seem to have any merit either. NFL executive Troy Vincent recently shared findings from the 2024 season that showed that absolutely no injuries were incurred during a Tush Push play in 2024. Eat your heart out, Green Bay Packers!
