While tabled for this year, momentum is building in NFL circles to ban the Eagles powerhouse QB Sneak play as the Eagles prove to be too challenging to face, so the league feels the need to make it easier on the other 31 teams
The NFL Annual meetings are ongoing. Besides Nick Sirianni being the only one in shorts for the annual coaches picture (power move), the biggest story remains: will the Tush Push be banned? Well, for this year, no. NFL executives decided to table discussions on it for the time being, and it will not be banned this year. First proposed by the Packers, initial reports seem to suggest that there is more momentum than ever to ban the play the Eagles have mastered. There’s a handful of ridiculous reasons for the banning of the play, including that it is dangerous or incongruent with NFL play, but when you boil it down, the problem the league has with the play is one thing and one thing only: The Eagles are TOO good at running the play.
The desire to ban this play seems to be centered solely around the fact that teams are mad that the Eagles are running it at such a high success rate. It’s soft. At Least three teams have come out publicly to state they will vote against it, and it is fair to say they are very clearly coming at it with bias. The Buffalo Bills were one of the teams, as Head Coach Sean McDermott expressed “concerns” about safety while even saying there’s no evidence to suggest it is unsafe when saying why it should be banned. The Bills run QB Sneaks at one of the highest rates in the NFL. I’m sure Sean is not salty about the fact that if they could have executed it in the AFC Championship game, they would have been playing in the Super Bowl, but no, they went 0-4 on it. The second team is the Dallas Cowboys. Need I say any more as to why they would like to nerf the Eagles? Another team is apparently the Rams. Could this be because Sean McVay is 1-5 in his career against the Eagles, with the one win being a meaningless week 3 win in 2020? Who’s to say? Washington is another team that has voiced a desire for the play to be banned. I cannot think of a reason why. The other team is the team that pitched it, the Green Bay Packers. I am sure having to play the Eagles twice this year, once in a playoff game where your team got punked and your “franchise” QB had 3 picks, didn’t influence things. Also, it is very rich because they run their variation of the Tush Push. Vince Lombardi, a man who valued precise execution and innovation, is rolling over in his grave that his historic franchise is protesting a team for being “too good” at running a play.
The argument that the Tush Push is not a football play is insane. The Brotherly Shove is quintessential, old-school football. My players are going to put their heads down and move your players off the ball and I am going to move down the field. It is the essence of football and genuinely exciting. It also can, in fact, be stopped. Even in the NFC Title game the Eagles were stopped at least once on the play. As Nick Siriani has said, to say it’s automatic discredits the Eagles. It is automatic, not because the Eagles are running it, but because of the personnel and coaching. They have the largest and best offensive line in the NFL and have worked to possess and maintain that over many years now. They also have a quarterback that squats over 500 pounds. They also run it under multiple cadences and change the timing of the play each time while giving it slight variances. It is a super well-executed play. Again, it is not a cheat code. Tom Brady was maybe the most effective QB of all time when it comes to the QB Sneak, converting nearly 92% of his career sneaks. Where was the outrage?
Philadelphia often builds up an “Us vs Them” mentality, with fans often feeling like the city is too harshly criticized or its teams aren’t taken seriously, and for the most part, this idea is nonsense. However, this situation does warrant those feelings. The problem here does seem to be that the Philadelphia Eagles are too good at something. That is it. Many teams run this play and are very successful at it, but the problem here appears to be the Eagles. You can see NFL fans and executives’ brains breaking in real time solely because the Eagles are really good. Personally, it does not appear that there are enough votes to ban it. As many teams have come out and said they do not have a problem with it. The play is stoppable, and ultimately, maybe even soon, a team will find a way to slow it down, even the Eagles’ version of it. If this play does get banned it must be noted that this is the softest decision the NFL has ever made and it should be remembered that a team was TOO GOOD at something that every single team has access to and can run whenever they want, but chose rather to give up and ban the play instead. The rule needs to be called The Bird Law, or maybe The Eagles Exception, or maybe the We’re Soft Clause.
One warning, though, is that banning this play will not stop the Eagles from being good in 3rd/4th short situations. They have the best offensive line in the NFL, a quarterback who is elite in short yardage, and the best RB currently on the planet. They will continue to convert. The best solution might just be keeping the Eagles from short yardage if you can. As Chris Long suggested on his Green Light Pod, blitzing on 2nd down to try and prevent 3rd and short might be an option. Keeping them from 3rd/4th and short might be the best thing if you can do that.. Hell, the Eagles’ defense was really good this year at keeping opponents from doing that. It is probably in the best interest of the NFL to not piss the Eagles off. They were the bullies of the NFL in 2024, I probably would not give them a reason to be annoyed. Do you want to see Jordan Mailata or Jordan Davis, maybe even Jalen Carter, taking short-yardage snaps? Because this is how you get 360 lbs running at you at full force. The Eagles, like any great team, adapt and evolve. Banning The Tush Push will not magically stop them from being great, as their coaching staff will just innovate something else. Should we ban fast wide receivers from running deep routes because they’re hard to cover? Should guys like Saquon Barkley and Derrick Henry only be allowed to touch the ball 15 times a game because they are hard to tackle? Should elite QBs have to sit out a quarter each game since they are so hard to play against? It just feels so bizarre to be having real conversations about the validity of a play solely because a team is good at it. I cannot recall another situation in the NFL. If there are legitimate injury concerns with evidence to suggest that is the case, then it is a conversation worth having, but at the moment, it is just not there. Ultimately, this conversation says one thing, and one thing only: The league is SOFT.
