The Eagles beat the Packers in the Wild Card Round a few weeks back.
Green Bay fumbled right off the opening kickoff, which Jalen Hurts flipped into a touchdown strike to Jahan Dotson, Dallas Goedert stiff-armed a DB all the way to the end zone later on, and then Jordan Love threw three picks to send the Packers home while the Eagles moved on to the Divisional Round and a matchup with the L.A.Rams.
But nah, it's the "Tush Push" says the Packers' president, apparently. It's bad and it should be banned.
Mark Murphy, Green Bay's president and CEO, had a column go up on the Packers' website over the weekend where he did a postmortem on their season and took a few questions from fans.
One of them asked his opinion about the "Brotherly Shove"/"Tush Push."
Murphy's response:
"I am not a fan of this play. There is no skill involved and it is almost an automatic first down on plays of a yard or less. The series of plays with the Commanders jumping offsides in the NFC Championship Game to try to stop the play was ridiculous. The referee even threatened to give the Eagles an automatic touchdown if the Commanders did not stop it. I would like to see the league prohibit pushing or aiding the runner (QB) on this play. There used to be a rule prohibiting this, but it is no longer enforced because I believe it was thought to be too hard for the officials to see. The play is bad for the game, and we should go back to prohibiting the push of the runner. This would bring back the traditional QB sneak. That worked pretty well for Bart Starr and the Packers in the Ice Bowl." [Packers.com]
Okay, so here we go again.
To the point that it takes no skill: It's weird how the Eagles have had it around for more than three years now with the rest of the NFL, a notorious copycat league, completely unable to replicate. No one else has approached 3rd and 1s/4th and 1s like the Eagles have, and the real reason is because no one else has Jalen Hurts or Lane Johnson or Jordan Mailata or Landon Dickerson, Mehki Becton, and so on – and oh by the way, all those names are linemen who play in front of Hurts. Not behind.
To the point of what happened to the Commanders in the NFC Championship Game being ridiculous: Yeah, it was…for the Commanders. They kept jumping offsides. That wasn't the Eagles' problem.
To the point that it's bad for the game: Again, no one else has consistently replicated it. Players on other teams have even hurt themselves trying it. The game changes and evolves all the time. The Eagles figured something out. Patrick Mahomes figured something out, too, when he dances along the sideline trying to draw flags, and that's a whole other annoyance to the rest of the league. Have you tried getting your QB to squat 600 pounds so he can power through for a yard?
Oh yeah, and to the Ice Bowl remark: That was 58 years ago.
Anyway, the Packers lost back-to-back heading into the playoffs, including to a bad Bears team in Week 18, before running into the Eagles.
Then they lost to the Eagles for reasons that had nothing to do with the "Tush Push," but yeah, be mad about that, I guess.
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