In a Game of Inches, the Eagles Are Taking a Whole Damn Yard With the “Tush Push”
Philadelphia popularized this play during its Super Bowl run last season and has been running it to great effect in 2023. But the Eagles aren’t the only team that can do it—they’re just the one that’s willing to try it the most.
Jack Del Rio already wasn’t a fan of the “tush push” when his team played the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 4. The Washington Commanders defensive coordinator said last Thursday that he’d like to see the rugby-style QB sneak eliminated, “not just because [the Eagles] run it better than anybody, although they do run it better than anybody. I don’t think it’s a football play. It’s a nice rugby play. It’s not what we’re looking for in football. But until it’s outlawed, we’ll prepare for it and do our best to stop it.”
Washington had plenty of opportunities to stop it on Sunday. Four, to be exact. And all four times, Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts lined up under center with multiple backers behind him and carried the ball past the first-down marker (one of those conversions was called back on a penalty). The last tush push, or “Brotherly Shove,” as it’s called in Philadelphia, probably decided the game. It came in overtime, with the Eagles facing a fourth-and-1 from the 50-yard line. Hurts called for the snap as soon as the official allowed it and trucked his way over the Washington defensive line for the first down.
Six plays later, Jake Elliott made a 54-yard field goal to give Philly the 34-31 win.
You can see in the video above why Del Rio called it a “rugby play.” It looks more like a scrum than anything you’d typically see in a football game—at least in the modern era. No receivers flank out wide, and the offensive linemen are all in four-point stances. But football historians, or anybody who’s read up on the strategic evolution of the game, will tell you that the tush push is not only a football play, it’s arguably the football play—the starting point for the strategic evolution of the sport.
Over a century after the origination of the tush push, the Eagles are using this old scheme, updated for the modern game, to turn high-leverage situations into automatic conversions. They’re doing it with a concept that seems pretty easy to replicate, but no other teams come close to running it as often as Philly. What makes the Eagles’ version special? And why isn’t the rest of the NFL following their lead?
The Eagles deployed the tush push heavily during their Super Bowl run last season, and many believed they were breaking football with a cutting-edge tactic. Really, though, they were just throwing it back to the days of Walter Camp and beating opponents with one of the first ideas football coaches ever had.
Camp, known as “the father of American football,” first came up with the play design in the 19th century. He applied the strategy teams were using for kickoffs to a typical scrimmage play, and the description of his creation—from Alexander Weyand’s 1955 book, The Saga of American Football—should sound familiar: “The players ranged themselves in a wedge with only the center on the line of scrimmage. Each man placed his hands on the hips of the man in front. When the ball was snapped, the players closed in tight and shoved. The ballcarrier was protected on all sides.”
Back then it was known as “the shoving wedge,” which isn’t nearly as creative as the names we’re giving it now. But from that baseline, coaches started to add other elements. Famed coach Amos Stagg added a pitch option. Others had linemen pull to escort ballcarriers to the perimeters of the field, away from the mass of humanity clogging up the middle. And across the next 100 years, those tweaks helped lead to a more spread-out game. The Eagles are just bringing things full circle.
Even in this era of the game, other teams were running the tush push before Philly. Here’s Georgia doing it in 2019, three years before we saw the Eagles run it.
And UTEP really got the ball rolling during the 2019 season. The Miners started running it in late September of that year and haven’t stopped since. They lead the FBS in tush push attempts this year with eight, per Pro Football Focus. Head coach Dana Dimel might be the person who deserves the most credit for updating Camp’s old “shove wedge” and bringing it to the 21st century. Dimel was the offensive coordinator at Kansas State in 2015—the year The Wichita Eagle wrote a piece about the team headlined “Quarterback Sneaks Are a Team Effort at Kansas State.” He was also with the team in 2016, when the Wildcats scored this touchdown against Texas Tech using the tush push:
I don’t have stats on how well Camp’s Yale teams executed their “shoving wedge” in the late 1800s, but I can tell you that Philadelphia has nearly perfected its version. By my count, the Eagles have attempted 11 tush pushes this season, including the four against Washington on Sunday, and they’ve converted a first down on 10 of those 11 plays. The only one that got stopped was against the Buccaneers in Week 3, on a third-and-1 near the goal line. Philadelphia simply reran the play on fourth-and-1, and Hurts punched it into the end zone. Even that failure set up an eventual success.
Philadelphia seemed to start messing around with the concept early in the 2022 season. In the team’s Week 1 win in Detroit, the Eagles had a tight end push Hurts over the first-down line on a sneak attempt. But it wasn’t until a Week 6 game against Dallas that we saw the version of the play we’re now familiar with.
Things took off from there. Per PFF, the Eagles picked up 31 first downs on QB sneaks last season, and after that Cowboys game, almost all of them were from some variation of the tush push. This season, the Eagles have gained nearly 10 expected points on 11 tush push attempts. Thirty-five EPA is roughly equivalent to a win, per data analyst Eric Eager of SumerSports, so Philly has already picked up nearly an extra third of a win with this play. The obvious follow-up question is, why aren’t more teams doing this sort of thing?
The typical answer is usually something like, Well, other teams don’t have Jalen Hurts and Jason Kelce. But contrary to popular belief, the concept doesn’t require the league’s best offensive line to be run effectively, nor does it require a QB who can squat 600 pounds. Having those elements certainly helps: Kelce and left guard Landon Dickerson do an excellent job of getting under the defensive line and softening it up for Hurts. But the numbers suggest you don’t need two All-Pro players to run the play effectively. Leaguewide, teams have a 74 percent success rate on the tush push, meaning this play can work for virtually any roster. And the same is true at the college level, where the success rate on these sneaks—which I define as plays with at least two backfield players pushing the QB over the line—is virtually identical, according to Pro Football Focus.
Last year’s NFC champs were so good at running the play that the NFL’s competition committee was asked to review the legality (and safety) of it in the offseason. The committee decided the play could continue, so this season, Philly’s opponents have had to take an “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” approach. Other teams around the league have run a version of the tush push 20 times this season. And while the Eagles have generated the most total EPA on those plays (9.4) and converted 83 percent of the time, they surprisingly aren’t the most efficient team at pushing on their QB’s tush.
2023 Tush Push Leaders
That honor belongs to the Cardinals! Which makes some sense. First-year head coach Jonathan Gannon came over from the Eagles in the offseason, and he’s had Arizona running the play efficiently even with a suspect offensive line and Joshua Dobbs at quarterback. In fact, while it may seem like teams across the league are trying and failing to run the tush push, that’s probably our perception based on a few notable failures.
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The Giants failed to convert a tush push against the Seahawks on Monday night, and Eagles cornerback Darius Slay tweeted about it. Football fans laughed at New York’s feeble attempt and laughed even harder when Brian Daboll revealed that his team had never really practiced the play before the botched effort. But the Giants have run the play in other games, and before Monday had converted all four times. Their current 80 percent success rate is only three percentage points off Philadelphia’s.
The data show that the NFL’s other 31 teams can run the play with efficiency similar to Philly’s. And we’ve seen teams with other, similar strategic innovations on QB sneak plays over the past few seasons. The Chicago Bears have been particularly imaginative. They’ve successfully executed the tush push twice this season, but they’ll also motion a TE under center right before the snap and have him handle the play. And while the Bears aren’t the only team to do this—the Chiefs have done it with Travis Kelce, and the University of Hawaii was doing it years ago—they were the first pro team I’ve seen turn that play into a pitch to the QB:
Still, no team has leaned into this iteration of the sneak quite like Philadelphia. This play isn’t just some gimmick the Eagles run every so often. It’s a focal point of the offense, and the team’s success with it affects how plays are called in other situations. While a third-and-medium is an obvious passing down for other teams, the Eagles can call a play knowing they just need a few yards to set up an easy conversion on fourth down. It’s a clear market inefficiency.
The rest of the NFL should stop worrying about how much the Eagles are running it and instead ask why other coaches aren’t running it more often. It’s a sound play that’s been working for offenses since before the league was founded. And it’s become an unstoppable tool for Philadelphia. In a game of inches, the Eagles can take a whole yard whenever they damn well please.
