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The Bills and Chargers Voted to Ban the Tush Push but are Converting at a Higher Percentage than the Eagles
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This was, objectively speaking, a bad call by the zebras because Jalen Hurts’ forward progress was stopped before Chicago’s Nahshon Wright ripped the ball out of his hands:
This play should have been blown dead, while the refs should have held the whistle in the Giants home game, when Kayvon Thibodeaux did the same exact thing. So it was the same thing basically and they screwed it up both times. One instance of blowing the whistle too soon, one instance of blowing it too late.
Regardless, it goes down as a fumble and a failed shove.
Going back three weeks now, the Eagles are just 2-8 with the tush push and converting at a 25% success rate.
According to the tush push tracker, they went:
- 1-6 against Detroit: After a second quarter touchdown plunge, they were stuffed three times and committed two false starts.
- 1-1 against Dallas: This was an easy conversion on first and goal from the one-yard line.
- 0-1 against Chicago: Only push was the fumble in the clip above.
It’s not an automatic play anymore, and has seemed like a bit of a struggle all year long behind a banged-up offensive line. The Eagles are converting at 61.5% this season, just 16 successes on 26 attempts, which includes pre-snap penalties that force a change of play. That’s below the league average of 69.4%.
The tush push tracker only has full data through Week 11 right now, so we can update the story when those numbers become available, but the quirk is that the Birds have more than one-third of the league’s 72 logged attempts this season. Buffalo, which voted against the play, is 8 for 11 this season with five touchdowns. The Chargers are 7 for 8 (no scores) and Seahawks are 4 for 6. No other team has tried it more than five times.
But of those three, smaller sample size being what it is, they’ve having more success than the Eagles. Go figure.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com