By CNN
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Inevitability isn’t a word often associated with sport – especially in the National Football League (NFL) where fans know that almost anything can happen at any given time. Yet the Philadelphia Eagles seem close to harnessing the power of certainty thanks to one play: “The Brotherly Shove.”
A play on Philadelphia’s “City of Brotherly Love” nickname, the “Brotherly Shove” – also known as “The Tush Push” – has become the NFL’s most talked about play.
With the playoffs underway and Philly struggling mightily in recent weeks, can the “Brotherly Shove” get the Eagles over the line against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Monday? Here’s all you need to know about the sport’s most unstoppable play.
What is the brotherly shove?
The “Tush Push” is the Eagles’ own version of the quarterback sneak and is brought out when Philadelphia finds itself in short-yard situations.
Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts drives forward with the football following the snap, as other members of the Eagles offense pile in, pushing all in the same direction to get Hurts over the first-down line.
‘The deflater’
“You know what’s coming and you can’t stop it. That’s the worst thing,” Brian Baldinger, who spent 11 years in the NFL as an offensive lineman and is now an analyst, explains to CNN Sport.
Last season, per The Athletic, the Eagles had a success rate of 93.5% when running the “Tush Push.” This year, the success rate remains well above 90% and the play is a staple of the Eagles offense.
Baldinger calls the play a “deflater” because of its dominance on the field. “They are broadcasting to you exactly what they are going to do and you are kind of helpless to stop it,” he said.
Star quarterback Hurts has rushed into the end zone a QB season-record 15 times – with a staggering 11 touchdowns coming from the “Tush Push.”
“So many games in this league are decided by a yard. You can’t gain a yard at the goal line or you get stopped in short yardage and you’ve got to give the ball back,” Baldinger adds.
“Games are being decided by [the ‘Tush Push’] and the Eagles are winning games because of it. They’ve won a lot of games over the last couple of years because they can make that yard.”
Baldinger, who played with the Indianapolis Colts, Dallas Cowboys and Eagles, adds that because of the Eagles’ commitment to and confidence in the play, head coach Nick Sirianni’s team is prepared to bring out the “Brotherly Shove” anywhere and any time on the pitch.
Brooks Kubena, The Athletic’s Eagles beat writer, references a game against the Dallas Cowboys earlier this season where Philadelphia utilized the play in a variety of different situations.
“They brought it up four times in four different situations,” Kubena explains to CNN. “They had it on a fourth-down conversion, a third-down conversion, a third and goal score. Then they even brought it out on their own goal line to try and avoid a safety later on and were successful with that too.”
And the four times the Eagles ran the play, it worked.
“Seeing it there, there is that inevitability. You’re like, ‘Oh my gosh. Let’s see if this is a defense that’s going to be able to get the right push to stop it.’ And it hasn’t really happened yet,” Kubena adds.
“Defenses want to get off the field, so when they know that this team comes in and they continue to convert and then they show up and here it is again. It’s a very grueling play to go up there and try and stop it.”
‘It’s organized mass’
Kubena explains that Shane Steichen, former Eagles offensive coordinator, found something that really suited his players when piecing the “Tush Push” puzzle together and it is something that Sirianni and new offensive coordinator Brian Johnson have retained faith in.
“The pieces to this are very specific to the Eagles,” Kubena details. “They have a very good offensive line, they’ve got depth in the backfield that can help push and they’ve got a quarterback who could squat 600 pounds.”
The Eagles are able to boast one of the finest offensive lines in the game to complement and protect one of the most athletic quarterbacks in the league – including the likes of Jason Kelce, Lane Johnson and Jordan Mailata.
With the margins in sport so minute, Philadelphia also sought outside advice on how to gain the extra 1% and turned to someone traditionally outside of football – step forward “the Scottish guy.”
Richie Gray has worked behind the scenes in professional sport for decades, but when Kelce mentioned him on his ‘New Heights’ podcast, the coach was thrusted into the limelight.
Gray was brought in by the defensive room to give advice on tackling techniques from his main sport of rugby but was soon asked by offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland for advice on how teams could stop the “Tush Push.”
Gray recalls saying, “Coach, there is nothing you can do to stop it, it’s organized mass,” a phrase that Kelce impersonated on his podcast in his best Scottish accent.
While Gray maintains that to be the case, he also attributes much of the success of the “Brotherly Shove” to the personnel – both on and off the field.
“For me, they’ve got a world class coach in Jeff Stoutland, you’ve got some key personnel that are involved in the play and also the Eagles train it and perfect it better than anyone else,” Gray outlines to CNN Sport.
“The key with this play is also that action will always beat reaction,” Gray says as he explains that the advantage is always with the Eagles’ dominant offensive line.
Kubena agrees and says that the added “wrinkles” on the play have made it even harder to stop.
Philadelphia now has different variations of the push.
After lining up for the play on December 31, Hurts tossed the ball back to running back Kenneth Gainwell who threw to DeVonta Smith downfield against the Arizona Cardinals, but more impressively, D’Andre Swift scored a touchdown when peeling off the play against the Washington Commanders on October 29.
“They’ve got a couple of different variations if you try to overplay it and they’ve scored off it. So you can’t just completely sell out and just play the shove because they might do something else,” Baldinger adds.
Gray refers to football as “human chess played at a hundred miles an hour,” and with this play, the Eagles have become grandmasters.
Here to stay?
While loved by fans in Philadelphia, the play is also loathed by certain circles in the NFL.
One criticism of the play is that it seems rugby-like in nature, but Gray, currently coaching at French rugby club Toulon, completely disagrees.
“It’s not a rugby play by any stretch of the imagination, it’s completely different to any rugby play,” he explains.
Gray, along with Baldinger and Kubena, maintains that while every team in the league can attempt a “Tush Push,” it is unfair to criticize the play just because the Eagles simply do it better.
Eagles head coach Sirianni agrees.
“You’ve seen it across the league that people can’t do it like we can do it,” Sirianni told reporters. “Don’t ban this play. If everybody could do it, everybody would do it.”
“I think there was a report that either the league office or the Commissioner was looking to eliminate this play. That was false,” NFL executive Troy Vincent said, per NFL.com. “You don’t want to punish anyone for doing something well.”
With opposition players such as Tyreek Hill and Nick Bosa publicly defending the play, as well as NFL executives, it seems the “Brotherly Shove” is most likely here to stay, but will it be enough to help carry the Eagles past the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and kickstart their postseason?
