The Philadelphia Eagles have mastered the infamous “tush push,” their short-yardage play where their quarterback, Jalen Hurts, gets spushed from behind to help him grind out the yardage needed.
However, the play has become controversial. Many feel that it isn’t a “true football play,” while others believe the Eagles are getting away with false starts. Now, it looks like the league plans to officiate the play toughly.
“Any time we have this situation we’re in short yardage, we know we want to make sure that we officiate these plays — the offensive team has to be perfect in every aspect,” he NFL’s vice president of officiating training and development, Ramon George, said in a training video for officials, via the Washington Post.
“We want to officiate it tight. We want to be black and white and be as tight as we can be when we get into this situation where teams are in the bunch position and we have to officiate them being onsides, movement early. … Prior to the snap, looks like we have movement by the right guard.
“We also have movement coming across from the defensive side. This is a very hard play to officiate. I get it.”
“You can see the right guard moves early,” George continued. “You’ve got your defender who’s trying to punch the ball. But more so, we have a false start coming from the right guard. We want to make sure that we officiate these plays tight and make sure that every aspect of the offensive team is legal and any movement . . . that’s not correct, we want to shut it down as a false start. False start would be the proper call here.”
It’ll be interesting to see if this new emphasis on officiating the play closely changes the Eagles’ effectiveness as an offense.
About Qwame Skinner
Qwame Skinner has loved both writing and sports his entire life. In addition to his sports coverage at Comeback Media, Qwame writes novels, and his debut; The First Casualty, an adult fantasy, is out now.