At some point during Sunday’s game, the Philadelphia Eagles are likely to line up for a quarterback sneak against the Los Angeles Rams. It’s not a traditional sneak, though. It’ll look more like a rugby scrum, with two players pushing Jalen Hurts across the line on what’s been a seemingly unstoppable play for the Eagles.
It’s been dubbed the “Tush Push” and the “Brotherly Shove,” but no matter what you call it, you (almost) can’t stop it.
Buy Rams TicketsThat being said, Aaron Donald has a plan. He says it’s all about leverage and getting lower than the offensive linemen, particularly the center.
“You got to be stout in the middle,” Donald said Thursday. “Obviously, offensive line tries to get as low as you can. I think it all starts from the center you get under his pads and pop him up and then guys crowd the ball. You can stop it, but it is definitely tough.”
As for what goes through Donald’s head when trying to prevent a play like that from converting? Speed and leverage.
“Get as low as you can and just get off full speed,” Donald said. “That’s it. That’s it. Make it powerful.”
Defensive coordinator Raheem Morris is preparing his players for the inevitable play, and he gives the Eagles a lot of credit for the job they’ve done designing it, but more importantly, executing it.
Other teams around the NFL have tried to copy it, which Sean McVay said the Rams will not do, and have mostly failed. The Eagles have a dominant offensive line and a quarterback who was squatting 600 pounds in college, which makes a huge difference when running this play.
Morris, however, doesn’t understand why the NFL hasn’t outlawed it yet, considering it’s the only play where you can push another player.
“People are still figuring that out. It’s a play that is not legal anywhere else in football to be able to push another player,” Morris said. “You can’t do it on a field goal block, you can’t do it in any other area of the game, so I don’t really understand what’s taking so long to get it out, but it’s a great play and it was a great idea by (Nick) Sirianni and whoever brought up that idea because it’s worked. Whenever you have something work that many times in a row, clearly it was ingenious by those guys thinking of it. I’m sure they thought it was going to be outlawed by now and it’s not so they continue to go with it and we got to do our best efforts to try to push them back, knock them back, get a couple stops. It’s been stopped around the league a little bit. Some people have got lower pad level, done some different things and you got to get out there and try to knock that out.”
The issue for the Rams is that they don’t have great size along their defensive line. Their biggest player is Bobby Brown III, who’s 324 pounds. After that, it’s Larrell Murchison (297 pounds) and Kobie Turner (288 pounds). Even Michael Hoecht, who’s a 310-pound edge rusher, is heavier than all of the Rams’ defensive linemen besides Brown.
That could be an issue when it comes to stopping the “Tush Push.”
