Stop Whining About the "Tush Push," Chiefs Fans

Every time the Philadelphia Eagles win a close game -- or win a game on close plays -- in which the Eagles use the "tush push," I hear calls (usually from fans of the losing team) to ban the play.

Sometimes, as with the Eagles' beatdown of the Kansas City Chiefs yesterday, those calls are accompanied by claims that e.g. replays showed false starts by the Eagles' offense when that was the play.

Last things first:

Yes, if there are actual fouls in a play, it's the referees' job to detect those fouls and flag the play.

But the possibility that a foul could occur during a particular play doesn't have anything to do with whether that kind of play should be banned in the NFL's rules. There are no otherwise legal plays in NFL football in which it's impossible for a foul to occur.

The "tush push" was one of several tactics (and several Kansas City fails) that helped the Eagles win the game. Might it have been the decisive factor? Who cares? In any close game you can pick out a moment or three which, had they gone the other way, might have altered the outcome.

The Eagles are a damn good football team -- usually, and especially over the last few seasons. If they couldn't use the "tush push," they'd find other ways to make first downs, score points, and win games. Including, probably, yesterday's game.

Nor do the Eagles have a monopoly on the "tush push." Other teams are allowed to use it, and some have tried (with less success than the Eagles). In some ways, using it or defending against it are just resource questions:

1. Does it seem potentially key enough to the offense to build an offensive line that can pull it off, or is the team's money and time better spent on other things? The Eagles decided the former, and they've clearly invested in the right O-line players, and in the right amount of practice time, to prove that decision correct. Other teams' mileage may vary.
2. Does it seem potentially threatening enough to the defense to spend a lot of time and money developing better defenses against, or does the fact that you only have to worry about it when your opponent is the Eagles and they're inches from the first down or touchdown mark mean that you put your time and money into keeping them (and any other opponent) from getting to the place where it's useful?

I can think of one rule change that might be a good idea regarding the play right now, and that would be to allow "challenge flags" to be thrown against gains on the basis of false starts/offsides fouls, as they can be on some other plays. Let the defending team's coach say "this needs top-level video review because I think that member of the O-line moved too early -- and I'm willing to bet a time-out on it."

As for the play itself, the only case I could see for banning it would be if  a bunch of teams start using it and it proves uniformly impossible to defend against, unbalancing gameplay by basically guaranteeing "short yardage" conversions. But we're not there yet. So far, it's just a matter of the Eagles having found something that works for them much of the time, at least right now, and their opponents not, at least yet, finding something that counters it reliably.

The same thing could be said of Bill Walsh's "West Coast Offense" in the 1980s and 1990s, which involved replacing the 49ers' run game with a "short pass" strategy for matriculating the ball down the field, powering them to several Super Bowls. Eventually, other offenses adopted, and other defenses adapted to, that. Should screens and checkdowns have been banned just because they worked?