KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Under the pretext that players are more likely to get injured on the play, NFL owners considered banning the Philadelphia Eagles’ famed Tush Push during the offseason.
There’s scant evidence that the play presents a heightened injury risk, but it’s certainly a vexing play for opposing defenses and game officials. Perhaps worst of all, it’s boring.
“A lot of pounds, you know,” Trent McDuffie said of what makes the Tush Push so hard to stop.
The Chiefs faced seven Tush Pushes during a 20-17 loss Sunday at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium with no real success.
Kansas City stopped the play for no gain twice — once on a third-down sneak at the goal line, which was challenged, reviewed and upheld, and later on second down in the closing minutes.
In both instances, Philadelphia doubled up on the Tush Push one play later and converted both times, scoring the game-winning touchdown, then icing the game with a third-down conversion that allowed the Eagles to run out the clock.
The Chiefs’ defense made no excuses, at least publicly.
“We actually stopped it a couple times today, more than once,” defensive tackle Chris Jones said. “Even the last time, we thought we had the ball. We see them again, and we’ll be stopping it more.”
But the difficulty in officiating the play is the new controversy swirling around the Tush Push, which is where a rugby-style scrum meets the traditional quarterback sneak.
Fox’s officiating expert, Dean Blandino, lamented the play on the broadcast: “I’m done with the Tush Push, guys,” when trying to explain whether Drue Tranquill should have been credited with a forced fumble and fumble recovery in the game’s closing minutes.
Philadelphia also seems to have figured out that NFL officials don’t notice when their guards false start on the play, because replays showed multiple examples of early movement that weren’t flagged, including two apparent false starts on the game-winning touchdown as the guards submarined forward before the snap.
“You try to get penetration is what you try to do and be able to stop it,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said after the game about defending the play. “That’s a pretty rough one. They might have had a couple of them that they got off a little early on, but we’ll look at that.”
After getting a chance to watch film, it confirmed what he — and social media — suspected, that the Eagles are getting away with firing early on a play that’s already hard to stop and difficult to officiate.
“If guys are moving early, then you’ve got to call that,” Reid said during his Monday availability. “They’ll (the officials) go back and look at that and see what their evaluation is of it. It could be different than mine. Mine, I felt like the guys were moving. That’s why I was griping about it on the sideline there with the officials. Sometimes people see things different. We’ll see where it goes. They’ll have a chance to evaluate it, and I’ll be curious to see what the response is.”
Jones, whose microphones caught him barking at Eagles QB Jalen Hurts as he kneeled out the game, didn’t let out any frustration over the missed false-start penalties after the game.
“You can’t get all the calls right,” he said. “Just because we see it, sometimes the official is 15 or 20 feet away and can miss those small things. We think he jumped multiple times, but the official didn’t see it, so it wasn’t called. We’ve just got to go play the next down.”
Additionally, the play is such a jumbled pile of humanity it often renders the NFL’s replay system useless.
Hurts, who carries the ball most times in the Eagles’ super-sized version of a quarterback sneak, probably scored on his third-down carry at the goal line midway through the third quarter, but clear-and-obvious video evidence is hard to find within the tonnage of humanity that piles up.
“They’ve got a knack for it,” Reid said. “You look at the rest of the teams that try this thing, and it’s a crapshoot there.”
Patrick Mahomes revealed after the game that the Chiefs haven’t completely ruled out using their own version of the QB sneak, even though Reid has steadfastly refused to call it since Mahomes suffered a dislocated kneecap in an October 2019 game at Denver.
“I'm always up to it, you know,” Mahomes said. “We've put it in certain games. ... I just trust in Coach Reid, whatever he calls, but we've put it in, and you kind of have to get the right look. We didn't think they (Philadelphia) were going to give us that right look this week.”
Instead, Kansas City leaned on Kareem Hunt in short-yardage situations, getting stuffed once and converting once.
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KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business and eastern Jackson County.Share your story idea with Tod.