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Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts scored a touchdown on a Tush Push in the Super Bowl win over the Chiefs. Photo: kirby lee/Reuters
When the Philadelphia Eagles wound up one yard away from the end zone in the first quarter of the Super Bowl earlier this month, there was no question about what was coming next.
It was time for the Tush Push.
The Eagles’ near unstoppable sneak play, which involves a group of players lining up behind quarterback Jalen Hurts and propelling him forward, came through once again. Hurts barreled into the end zone for the first touchdown in what would turn into a shocking rout of the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs.
It’s been three years since Philadelphia began regularly using the tactic as the NFL’s ultimate short-yardage weapon, and in that time the play has proven as polarizing as it has been effective.
For the rest of the NFL, which had tried and failed to stop it on the field, there was only one thing left to do: Push to get the play outlawed from the game.
This is the time of year when the league mulls tweaks to its rulebook, usually to make football safer or the action more compelling. Many of these proposals go nowhere—and even those that do can take years of fine-tuning before they’re actually approved and implemented.
But the ban on this widely-copied sneak, first proposed by the Green Bay Packers this week, looks suspiciously like an attempt to get a play eliminated from the rulebook purely because it’s too effective behind the guise of health and safety.
“We’re not very successful against it, I know that,” Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst said. “I think there will be a lot of discussions about it.”
It’s as though rival teams had tried to disallow the West Coast offense when they couldn’t stop Bill Walsh’s 49ers or tried to get rid of the Packers sweep play that helped Green Bay dominate pro football in the 1960s.
Anyone who has watched football over the past two decades has seen how rule changes designed to make the game safer can affect the action on the field. Bone-rattling hits that used to be celebrated are now penalized, and even sneezing within a few yards of a quarterback these days seems to draw a flag for roughing the passer.
But when it comes to the Tush Push, there’s no evidence that the play poses an outsize risk.
The Green Bay Packers have proposed a ban on the Tush Push. Photo: Leandro Bernardes/Zuma Press
Jeff Miller, the NFL executive vice president who oversees health and safety, says the league hasn’t been able to determine whether the relatively new play is more dangerous than others because it hasn’t been run often enough to produce significant data.
Still, those within the game maintain that it leads to more guys getting hurt, since the Tush Push often resembles something more commonly seen on a rugby pitch than an NFL field.
“I just feel like the health and safety of our players has to be at the top of our game,” said Buffalo Bills coach Sean McDermott. “The techniques that are used with that play, to me, have been potentially contrary to the health and safety of the players.”
There’s no debate, however, that the Eagles are in a league of their own when it comes to sneak plays. Since the start of 2022, the Eagles have converted 98 quarterback sneaks of two yards or less into first downs or touchdowns. That’s more than five times the average of the rest of the league, according to Stats.
The only team that attempted even half as many as Philadelphia was McDermott’s Bills, who have become one of its main copycats. They also might know better than anyone else why the play can be so maddening.
Bills quarterback Josh Allen was stopped on a fourth-down attempt in the AFC Championship. Photo: Reed Hoffmann/Associated Press
Because the play produces a big blob of guys, it can be difficult for officials to determine exactly when and where a player is ultimately down. Which is exactly the problem Buffalo ran into during the AFC Championship against the Chiefs.
In the fourth quarter of that game, quarterback Josh Allen lined up for a push play. The officials ruled that Allen was stopped short of the first-down line, giving Kansas City the ball, even though Bills fans swear he made it.
The call helped the Chiefs advance to the Super Bowl—where they couldn’t stop the one play they were certain the Eagles would run.
