Out of the blue this week a long time reader (and previously featured guest comic maker) sent me this. I’m glad he did, because I was basically ready to rant about the Tush Push again anyway. This just saved me the time of making what was basically the same joke. Thank you, Tommaso.
The people who want to ban the Tush Push are giant baby sore losers.
I’ve thought about the Tush Push probably about as much as every other fan who has been forced to think about it over these past several years of popularity and that is simply the conclusion I keep coming to. The Tush Push is a valid, perfectly fine play, and the people who want to ban it are just haters and sore losers. I’m glad the proposal to ban it was recently shelved for the time being. 16 teams apparently wanted to vote against it. 16 teams are babies.
Look. It brings me no joy to defend the Eagles, but the uproar they’ve caused with this play is far more annoying than the play itself. The arguments against it range from “maybe there’s a kernel of a point there” to “what the fuck are you even on about”. Everyone who rallies against the play just comes across like a giant baby upset that a different baby got the toy they wanted so now all toys must be banned from daycare. I have no love for the Eagles. I want the Eagles to eat shit and die, and so far they’ve only done the first part. I would enjoy watching Eagles fans whine and scream and moan about how unfair and bullshit it is to ban the play, but the thing is…they’d be right! All the critics are charmin 2-ply soft.
The fact is, the Eagles are a smart football team that built an extremely disciplined and effective offensive line and general run-based offense, and drafted/developed a running, powerfull assed Quarterback. They found a play that they could run that can pretty much 90% guarantee them a first down in tight short-yardage situations, and they run it. And it works. Almost every time. This is not a flaw. This is not a problem. This is not unfair. They just…fucking did what smart teams do? Smart teams find out what they are built for and operate it. Smart teams run plays that they know work! Smart teams build around their players skillsets! Bill Belichick and Josh McDaniels didn’t build the Patriots offense around Tom Brady being a runner. They built around what Tom Brady was good at and liked doing. The Eagles did what every team is hypothetically (not the Jets) are trying to do! Every year! This isn’t cheating or playing unfairly! It’s not unfair that the Eagles are good at it and nobody else is quite as good at it! That’s not unfair, that’s just the Eagles being fucking good at it! They built for it! They practice it! Shut the fuck up!
What are the arguments against it?
“Player Safety”. Okay. Sure. We’ve had the Eagles running this play for multiple years now, usually multiple times a game. That’s enough of a sample size to see if there is an increased injury rate on this play, for both the Eagles and opposing players. So is there any evidence? I can’t find any! There doesn’t seem to be! Oh, but Chris Jones got a neck stinger last year after lining up sideways in a weird attempt to stop it? STOP THE PRESSES IT’S UNSAFE. Football is an inherently dangerous sport. There are a lot of legal plays, like QB sneaks or most runs up the gut, which result in large piles of bodies. Nobody is calling for runs up the A gap to get banned. Nobody ever calls QB sneaks unfair. It seems like a perfectly normal risk to me, that is to say: it’s football, and there’s always risk. Most of us fucking hate the roughing the passer rules but a defenseless QB taking a shot seems more dangerous than this! We’ve seen the results of hitting defenseless receivers over the middle, there is evidence of how dangerous that is. Outlawing that for safety makes sense. We have no substantial evidence that the Tush Push is inherently more risky at this point in time.
“It’s Unfair” I kinda already tore this a new asshole but no it fucking isn’t. The Eagles being the only team that is so effective at it is not unfair. Every single team in the NFL, if they wanted, could build their team and execute the same play. Every other team can use the tush push. Many other teams do use the tush push. It just has about a normal hit rate for those teams. The Eagles being so good at it is not unfair. They are just built best for it, practice it, and execute it better than most. Skill issue. Git Gud. The Eagles are legally OP they do not need a nerf because you are a baby. The real problem is that nobody has figured out a good counter to it yet. Part of that is the Eagles overwhelming talent on the line compared to most teams, but part of that I think, is just defensive coordinators not putting in the work to figure it out. The play does get stopped. Stud defenders have stood them up. The Tush Push is basically just a QB sneak. Nobody wants to ban QB sneaks. If they banned the Tush Push, the Eagles would probably still convert normal QB sneaks at a very similar rate. It’s a high-percentage play, especially if you have the personnel for it, which they do. You want to stop the Eagles from using it? The Tush Push has one obvious weakness: being 3+ yards away from the line, so stop letting them get there. Occasionally, the Eagles will run the play twice in a row from shorter range, one to set up the next to be close enough, but this really just isn’t any different than running things up the gut to set up 3rd and short or whatever. The Eagles are a smart team that utilizes 4th downs. That’s not being unfair. That’s the Eagles being aggressive and smart. Your team being stupid or bad doesn’t make this unfair.
“It’s Ugly” or “It’s not fun to watch” – This one makes me want to throw everyone who says it in a woodchipper. Grow the fuck up. *lights pipe* “Dear me Charles, this dreadful Tush Push is just so uncouth, I cannot.” Wanting a play banned because you are not personally wowed by the entertainment value is…stupid. The NFL might be an entertainment product, but it is still a sport, and these guys are supposed to be trying to win. Fuck the aesthetics. Winning ugly is a win. Also? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I’m sure Eagles fans cream themselves and push their own tushes on every successful one, the perverts. Lots of football plays are ugly. Basically every single run up the gut for short yardage is a distorted pile of bodies where you can barely tell what is happening. QB sneaks, again. Same thing. So what. Saying you want this to go away because it isn’t fun to watch is just admitting you like shiny objects dangled in front of you. Go watch Wrestling or the circus if all you want from your sport is to be aesthetically pleasing and focused on pure entertainment. The men on the field? They have a job to do. I find most dumpoffs to be boring. Checkdowns are frequently shitty. Runs up the middle to get stuffed…so fun. I do not particularly find the Tush Push a pleasant feast for the eyeballs either, but who gives a shit. I don’t want it banned for that. Nonsense. Grow up. We get like 3 Tush Pushes a game. That’s barely any of our time wasted by “ugly gimmick predictable football”.
The last one, and the one that might have a kernel of a point, is this: Why does the offense get to push but the defense cant? Seems unfair! But actually unfair this time! Why can’t defenses push dudes? Seems to me like if both sides could scrum maybe things would even out a bit and the Eagles wouldn’t be able to rely on it so much. So the answer might not be banning the tush push, but allowing defensive pushing! Well…um, and I only recently learned this, but…this is already allowed. Defenders can already do that. This is not a real critique. As the redditor in that linked post points out, most teams are not likely to do it because sending too many defenders into the middle to stop it leaves them open to a fake. It also highlights something that a different redditor pointed out a month ago: teams do not seem to actually understand how the Tush Push works. It is a QB sneak, but it is designed a certain way to create leverage and almost always sends Hurts over the left side. Maybe that’s how to defend it. Commit to a side and throw/push all your defenders there and angle them correctly. The Eagles still have the advantage because they are built for it, but hey, worth a shot. Better than lining Chris Jones up sideways like a dummy. All teams need to do is find a way to stop the play just often enough that the Eagles no longer consider the play reliable enough to spam it. Defenders are not able to push or use leverage on kicking plays, which is an entirely separate discussion. It is not connected to the Tush Push and needs to stop being lumped together.
Basically every opponent to the tush push comes across like a sore loser being insufferable about nonsense. I wish the Eagles nothing but misery and stand to gain nothing but positives from this play being banned but it would just be out of pettiness. Banning a play because one specific team figured out how to make it really work for them is pathetic soft baby shit. Everyone who wants it banned should just frankly admit the truth: they are bitter and jealous. Just embrace being a hater and stop trying to make these soft sore loser arguments.
Fuck all you losers who made me defend the Eagles. Fuck the Eagles. Amen. Thanks for the guest comic, Tommaso.
