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Eagles coach with a new contract Nick Sirianni speaks with the media at NovaCare Complex on Tuesday, May 20, 2025. (Matt Slocum \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\nPHILADELPHIA \u2014 Operation Sour Grapes, AKA the Green Bay Packers\u2019 effort to ban the so-called \u201ctush push\u201d play that the Eagles run expertly, is expected to pass on Wednesday when the owners vote at the spring meetings in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t have any thoughts on it,\u201d wide receiver A.J. Brown said, laughing, at Tuesday\u2019s OTAs. \u201cIt\u2019s only one yard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown has often been the one pushing quarterback Jalen Hurts on the play, which involves a team lining up one or more players behind the quarterback to push him forward in short-yardage and goal-line situations.<\/p>\n
The tush push was used just 0.28% of the time leaguewide last season. The Eagles and Buffalo Bills ran it a total of 163 times, which was more than the other 30 teams combined.<\/p>\n
The Eagles and Bills had an 87% success rate, while the rest of the NFL only converted 71% of the time. Over the past three years, the Birds have been 90% effective with it.<\/p>\n
The Eagles developed the play, which is basically a twist on the QB sneak, in 2022 because it\u2019s perfectly catered to their personnel, which includes one of the most powerful offensive lines in the game and a quarterback in Jalen Hurts whose legs are so strong he can squat 600 pounds.<\/p>\n
Banning the tush push would require the support of at least 24 of the 32 owners. The Packers couldn\u2019t recruit enough votes at the meetings in Palm Beach, Fla., in late March and early April \u2014 reportedly persuading only 15 other owners to go along with their cause \u2014 but they feel more confident this time around.<\/p>\n
Green Bay amended the language from its earlier proposal. The updated language states that \u201coffensive players cannot assist the runner except by individually blocking opponents for him\u201d and also eliminates the phrase \u201cimmediately at the snap.\u201d The Packers added language banning pushing or pulling of the ball carrier anywhere on the field, not just behind the line of scrimmage, to lessen the obvious appearance that they\u2019re singling out the Eagles.<\/p>\n
Their new proposal basically reverts back to the pre-2005 rule.<\/p>\n
Eagles coach with a new contract Nick Sirianni speaks with the media at NovaCare Complex on Tuesday, May 20, 2025. (Matt Slocum \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n
\u201cIn terms of them banning the tush push, I hate that name, so I hope they do ban it,\u201d left tackle Jordan Mailata said Tuesday with a laugh. \u201cIt\u2019s a stupid name. \u2026 But we can\u2019t control (the vote), so we don\u2019t even worry about that. Right now, we\u2019re just installing our schemes. Worrying about if they\u2019re going to ban the tush push or not ain\u2019t going to win us another championship.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not up to us. We can\u2019t control if they rule for it or not. If they don\u2019t rule for the push, I guess we just go with no push then.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Packers initially tried to claim the play wasn\u2019t safe, even though there\u2019s no data to support that claim. Bills coach Sean McDermott also cited safety concerns, which is odd considering how frequently his team used the play. He admitted there was no such data.<\/p>\n
Commissioner Roger Goodell, who clearly wants to eliminate the tush push, said in April, \u201cIt\u2019s beyond data. There\u2019s also the mechanism of injury that we study \u2026 that leads us to show the risk involved with a particular play.\u201d Umm\u2026<\/p>\n
Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie has called the tush push, also known as the \u201cBrotherly Shove,\u201d a \u201cprecision play.\u201d He noted, \u201cI don\u2019t ever remember a play being banned because a single team or a few teams were running it effectively.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll see where it goes,\u201d coach Nick Sirianni said Tuesday, fresh off signing a multi-year, multi-million-dollar contract (specific terms undisclosed) a day earlier. \u201cWe\u2019re not waiting very long to figure it out. It\u2019s going to be public, and you know how I feel about it. We were at the owners\u2019 meetings and we talked about how we felt about it. I don\u2019t think anyone can question what my sentiment is, so we\u2019ll see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frankly, some folks just don\u2019t like the aesthetics of the tush push, with critics saying it\u2019s \u201cnot a football play\u201d or that it \u201clooks more like rugby.\u201d Never mind that American football is largely based on rugby.<\/p>\n
\u201cI almost feel a little insulted, because we work so hard at that play,\u201d Sirianni said at the Palm Beach meetings. \u201cThe amount of things we\u2019ve looked into on how to coach that play, the fundamentals. There\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t tell you how many times we practice the snap, we practice the play, because it\u2019s not a play that\u2019s easy to practice. So, there are different ways we\u2019ve figured out how to practice it, the complements that come off of it that can create explosive plays.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that it\u2019s an \u2018automatic\u2019 thing, we work really, really hard, and our guys are talented at this play. So it\u2019s a little insulting to say we\u2019re good at it, so it\u2019s automatic. \u2026 It\u2019s a skill that our team has because of the players that we have and the way the coaches coach it. There\u2019s just so much time put into it. The fact it\u2019s a successful play for the Eagles and people want to take that away, I think is a little unfair.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n
Follow Christiaan DeFranco on X at @the_defranc.<\/p>\n
Originally Published: May 20, 2025 at 8:03 PM EDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA \u2014 Operation Sour Grapes, AKA the Green Bay Packers\u2019 effort to ban the so-called \u201ctush push\u201d play…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2068],"tags":[25,7,6,242,109,2476,9,5367],"class_list":{"0":"post-67003","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia-eagles","8":"tag-eagles","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-philadelphia-eagles","13":"tag-philadelphiaeagles","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-top-stories-tmc"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114544674722292628","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}