Philadelphia Eagles Not Shy to Tweak 'Brotherly Shove' Amid 'Chess Match'

Philadelphia Eagles senior offensive assistant Marcus Brady is in charge of finding innovative plays from around the football world.

PHILADELPHIA - Every once in a while, Philadelphia Eagles coach Nick Sirianni will drop a little Easter egg of information into one of his press conferences.

A day after a 38-31 win over the Washington Commanders improved the Eagles to an NFL-best 7-1 was one of those occasions offered up while the coach was answering a query on the much-ballyhooed “Brotherly Shove” play that has become so controversial for so many who follow the league.

The immovable Commanders' front stopped the irresistible force of the Eagles’ tush push or at least forced a fumble, proving once and for all that there is a margin of error on a play that has seemed more like a validation than a competitive exercise.

That didn’t mean Philadelphia was going to scrap the play, however, and the Eagles’ showed tush push on 3rd-and-1 from the Washington 7-yard line with 1:53 to play. 

Instead of Jalen Hurts plunging ahead on a banged-up knee with some help from Dallas Goedert and A.J. Brown from behind, Philadelphia pulled out a tweak and handled the football to a sweeping D’Andre Swift for a 7-yard touchdown.

The time was right after the Commanders showed they were selling out to stop the sneak.

“Everything we do is collaborative and trying to think of different ways to marry things together,” Sirianni said. “We spend a lot of time on that in the offseason to know what we can mesh to our quarterback sneak, knowing that our quarterback sneak is a good play for us. What can we mesh to it to make sure that we slow people down from stopping it?"

Jalen Hurts powers forward for a QB sneak against the Arizona Cardinals / USA Today

The ultimate goal is to loosen up opposing defenses from selling out moving forward because now it’s on film that you have something else to worry about.

“You always want to protect your plays,” offensive coordinator Brian Johnson said. “The quarterback sneak play has been a huge part of what we’ve done here and you always try to find unique ways to create conflict with the defense and add little wrinkles that make your main play better. 

"We’ve had that kinda greased up for a couple weeks and got the right opportunity to get it called.”

Preparation for a human chess match each week is always evolving.

“When you run a play like that then everything has a reaction, right? So, the reaction to that is going to be the next teams we play are going to see that on tape and they may have to devote a little less attention to the quarterback sneak to stop the other things,” explained Sirianni. “That's why you do those things. That's the thought process.

“You're trying to play the chess match in everything that you do.”

Sirianni then offered up the intel, noting that Marcus Brady, the former Indianapolis offensive coordinator who is now a senior offensive assistant with the Eagles, is spearheading the search for new ideas.

“The person that's responsible for studying all the different college tape and things like that to give us some ideas of -- whether it's college tape, whether it’s around the NFL, whether it’s high school, whatever it is, we see a good play, we're willing to look into it and put it in if it benefits us and helps marry things to us is Marcus Brady,” Sirianni said. “That's one of his responsibilities, is to study around the NFL, study around college football to see if there are any interesting things to mesh with the things we're doing.”

It’s always a collaborative process, though.

“People not even on our staff saw people running crazy trick quarterback sneak plays and send them to your phone and stuff so you get a big bank of ideas of guys doing stuff,” Johnson said. “I think some of that news travels fast but anytime we feel like we have something that can make us better we always try to get that in.”

The most notable example of this kind of thing in Eagles’ history was the Philly Special in Super Bowl LVII, a play mined by Press Taylor, then an assistant quarterbacks coach, for Doug Pederson’s offense from a meaningless Week 17 matchup between Chicago and Minnesota the year prior.

“You get to see throughout the course of a season a couple of those ideas get brought into the fold and you’re able to hit them for huge plays,” Johnson said. “It becomes contagious throughout the staff.”