Eagles' Sirianni Shares Advice to Tush Push Complainers: 'Stop the Play!'

Philadelphia Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said the play is not automatic, but his team has the players that other teams may not have in order to execute it.

Nick Sirianni has had enough of the complaining from teams about the so-called tush push.

“There’s clearly a talent to it that our guys have,” said the head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles. “Maybe it’s automatic right now for the Philadelphia Eagles but it’s not automatic around the NFL, which is when you hear about it…I get that some people are complaining about it, but stop it, stop the play.”

Todd Bowles became the latest to sound off on the play. The head coach of the Eagles' Monday night opponent, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, wasn’t so much complaining about it as he was scratching his head about trig to stop it.

“You know it’s coming, they know they’re giving it to you and they get great push – they’ve got an athletic quarterback, they’ve got a big line, and I don’t think anybody has stopped it yet,” he said. “We’ll try like everybody else and see which side of the fence we fall on.”

Jalen Hurts executes a successful tush push in a game from 2022 / USA Today

Teams can’t stop it, for the most part. Oh, the Eagles were thwarted four times in 41 tries last year when the Eagles ran it on third or fourth down, so it’s not like it’s a totally invincible play.

Nor can some other teams run it as successfully as the Eagles, and maybe that’s why it ticks some teams off.

“Not everybody has Jason Kelce, Landon Dickerson, Cam Jurgens,” said Sirianni. “Not everybody has Jordan Mailata, not everybody has Lane Johnson on the other side, not everybody has that type of quarterback. We noticed that last year when people were making maybe some big deals about it.

“It’s not as automatic as some people think as we’re seeing across the NFL. Our players make it work. Frankly, us as coaches aren’t doing anything, we’re calling the play, and our players are going out and making it work.”

The frightening part is that Sirianni and his staff spent time in the offseason looking at it even more closely to see if they can get better at it. Even had the NFL outlawed it, which it didn’t, the coach believes his team would be successful on short yardage even without the push.

“We did some studies to help us be even better at it, but it’s about those guys up front, it’s about Jalen,” he said. “Think we’d be pretty successful even without the push but we’re just pushing him sometimes just to get that extra thump.”