Nick Sirianni takes exception to the idea that the "Tush Push"/"Brotherly Shove" is an automatic play.
The Eagles' signature short-yardage call is back under the league microscope again after the Green Bay Packers president and CEO Mark Murphy openly wrote about his disdain for the play a few weeks ago, which was followed up with a Green Bay proposal to the NFL to ban it this past week.
The complaints and the calls for the play's elimination from the game are nothing new. They were there all offseason after the Eagles powered their way to Super Bowl LVII two years ago, and are popping back up now after they made it all the way back and won Super Bowl LIX earlier this month.
The play hasn't gone anywhere in the time since. Still, Sirianni doesn't appreciate the common criticisms against it.
"I've seen some of the stuff like, well, you know that it's an automatic play," Sirianni said during a press conference at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis on Tuesday. "I almost feel a little insulted, because we work so hard at that play. The amount of things that we've looked into on how to coach that play, the fundamentals, there's a thousand plays out there, but it comes down to how you teach the fundamentals and how the players go through and do the fundamentals."
Those players include Cam Jurgens, Jordan Mailata, Landon Dickerson, Lane Johnson, and Mekhi Becton, who formed the league's strongest offensive line, and then quarterback Jalen Hurts taking the snap, who is uniquely just as powerful dirivng himself forward from overtop.
Other players pushing Hurts from behind is main source of bitterness toward the play, but so much of a sample size and film to review in the past few years since the Eagles have made regular use of it have shown that it's the O-line and Hurts powering through at the root of the play's success, or rather the Eagles' own in running it. The pushing part from behind is actually secondary.
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"I can't tell you how many times we practice the snap, we practice the play, because it's not a play that it's easy to practice," Sirianni continued. "There's different ways we figured out how to practice it, the complements that come off of it that can create explosive plays…
"Again, we saw it in big-time games this year. That it's an automatic thing, like, we work really, really hard, and our guys are talented at this play. So it's a little insulting to say it's just 'We're good at it, so it's automatic.' We work really hard at it."
To a degree that other teams, try as they might, haven't been able to consistently replicate.
The Bills tried to run it in the AFC Championship Game against the Chiefs and, controversially, didn't get the spot they needed for the first down. Also, in October 2023, the Giants tried it, only to end up hurting themselves.
"You see it throughout the league," Sirianni said. "I mean, we saw it in the championship games that, you know, a team failed at it and ultimately didn't end up winning the game because of it. Every week, I watch every first-and-goal red zone fail, every single time. Sometimes that first and goal starts at the 1, and you see the team not be able to get in because they're not able to do that.
"So I think that it's a skill that our team has because of the players that we have, the way the coaches coach it. Again, there's just so much time put into it. The fact that it's a successful play for the Eagles, and people want to take that away. I think it's a little, a little unfair."
And once again, it's also worth pointing out that the Packers didn't lose in the Wild Card to the Eagles because of that play. Again, they lost because Jordan Love threw three picks, Oren Burks forced a fumble on the opening kickoff, and Dallas Goedert posterized Carrington Valentine with the meanest stiff arms of the entire playoffs.
It's not the "Tush Push" that's the problem. It never was.
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