It doesn’t matter if you call it the Tush Push or the Brotherly Shove, or if you’re on the Philadelphia Eagles and you call it the Snoopy: the play is here to stay for at least one more season.
Twenty-two franchises with loser mentalities tried to ban the play, rather than build a team or scheme up a defense to stop it. They failed, and now Eagles fans (and the team) are taking a victory lap fueled by vengeance. The best place to go with that is looking at five of the most important Brotherly Shoves that have ever been run.
The Tush Push is often imitated, never replicated
When you’re thinking of a play that, in part, defines an era of football, you have to think about where it began. The single most important Tush Push was the first Tush Push. If it didn’t work there, then who knows how often it gets used in the future?
The Genesis
In 2023, NFL Films did a feature on the origin of the Tush Push. It’s got some hokey acting and doofus sounding background music, but for a seven-minute video, it does a good job explaining the background.
That brings us to the first time the Eagles ran a designed Tush Push: November 21, 2021. Week 11 v. New Orleans.
There was a stretch where the Saints had one of, if not the best, run defenses in the NFL. And every time the Eagles played them in that stretch, it didn’t matter. So when the Eagles lined up for a standard QB sneak on a third-and-one from their own 24-yard line, it seemed like a doomed scenario.
Then Dallas Goedert went in motion and stopped behind Jalen Hurts before the ball was snapped.
As Jason Kelce dipped his shoulder pads low and exploded up to knock defensive tackle Shy Tuttle off his base, Goedert grabbed Hurts by the waist, pushed, and they both went for a two-yard gain.
It wasn’t the prettiest version of that play that we’ve ever seen, but it was the beginning of something special.
The Mockery
Let’s fast forward to October 2, 2023. At this point, the Tush Push was at the front of everyone’s mind, given the success the Eagles had with it the entire 2022 season. The play didn’t seem like it was going anywhere, so instead of complaining about it, other teams were trying to run it themselves. Enter: the New York Giants.
On their first drive of the Week 4 Monday night game, New York found themselves in a fourth-and-1. They saw that the Eagles were able to get first downs at an incredibly high rate when they used tight ends, running backs, or receivers to be the pushers, so they thought to themselves, ‘What if we do it, but put some real big meatballs behind the quarterback?’
That’s exactly what they did; they used two offensive linemen to push. But because Daniel Jones is a bad quarterback, their offensive line stinks, their play calling was atrocious, and they didn’t actually know the intricacies of the play, it failed.
The Giants weren’t the first team to try to run the Tush Push, but this play was memorable because not only did it fail, but they also injured two of their own players.
Tight end Daniel Bellinger went down at the end of the play, holding his knee, and rookie center John Michael Schmitz messed up his shoulder. Bellinger was out for the rest of that game, but Schmitz ended up missing three more games after that.
There haven’t been any real injuries from the Tush Push, despite what a former Eagles defensive coordinator, turned-Bills head coach, would have you believe, but somehow the Giants managed to screw it up so profoundly that they took two of their guys out of the game… and then they lost 24-3.
The Thousand-Year War
The most famous Tush Push is the beautiful disaster in the 2024 NFC Championship game, when the Eagles ran it six consecutive times.
There’s not a whole lot that can be said about it other than just watching it and appreciating everything: Frankie Luvu’s incurable addiction to hitting people with the crown of his helmet. Jalen Hurts stepping out of the way so Luvu flops on the ground like a doofus. Cam Jurgens’ smile after every penalty. The way Dallas Goedert’s head snaps up when he sees someone move. A.J. Brown mocking people. The entire Washington defensive line being the most shook people of all time. The way the Eagles’ offensive line lets out their emotion after they finally score.
It was a masterpiece of high-stakes head games. It showed that not only is the Brotherly Shove the most physical play, but it’s also mental warfare.
The Failure
One thing the most recent Tush Push debate did is show us who the frauds and hypocrites are in the NFL world, and there is none bigger than the Bills’ head coach Sean McDermott.
The Bills ran their version of the Tush Push (which, per their Center Connor McGovern, is more of a Duo Concept) the second most of any team in the NFL, and they were really successful with it… until they weren’t.
In the 2024 AFC Championship game, the Bills were up 22-21 over the Chiefs with 13 minutes left in the fourth quarter. On a fourth and one, from the Chiefs’ 41-yard line, the Bills tried to push, and it really, really didn’t work.
Instead of the Eagles play where Hurts moves forward almost immediately, Josh Allen’s version has him stepping to his left and following the left guard. The Chiefs’ defense figured that out and got the turnover on downs.
As fate would have it, Sean McDermott is one of the most outspoken anti-pushers out there, and that’s unfortunate because he’s on the NFL’s Competition Committee. Those are the guys who are in charge of the rules and player safety stuff.
McDermott’s whole shtick is that the play has the potential of being unsafe. To be fair to him: yeah, duh —It’s football. I also just choked on a chicken nugget this morning, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop eating. There are inherent dangers in everything, and his argument is weak.
The best part about all of this is that the Bills just paid Josh Allen $300 million. That means, in Sean McDermott’s mind, he chose to put Josh Allen in danger, the second most in the entire NFL.
It’s either that, or McDermott is a loser, and instead of owning up to his bad/predictable short-yardage play calling, he wanted to ban the play that he’s bad at calling.
Whatever the case, the Bills ran this play in the AFC Championship game, it backfired spectacularly, and it lives somewhere in an unfortunately important guy’s head.
The Champions
Maybe this one wouldn’t have made it onto the list if the Eagles just converted a fourth down while they were up 40-6, but this is how they scored their first touchdown in Super Bowl LIX. That’s some big-time stuff right there.
It’s not just that the Eagles have mastered the play, they’re also able to execute it when the stakes are the highest. Clearly, not every team can do that.
We haven’t seen the end of Roger Goodell and other teams in the NFL trying to get the Brotherly Shove banned. At some point, someone is going to submit a proposal that has the right language, and there will be enough votes to change the rules. It’ll be a weak and cowardly move, but that won’t change the fact that the Eagles won a Super Bowl, and they the help of a play that took years to develop and perfect.
