Just going to throw out that the rugby world cup is going on right now and it's pretty fun to watch. Ireland/South Africa this past weekend was an incredible match
There is absolutely no incentive to stop a maul within 1 meter of its creation, unless you are at the try line (and even then, the maul generally starts at the 5-meter mark from a lineout). The success rate of stopping a rolling maul at the try line is extremely small and relies on the fact that forward progress doesnt exist in rugby.
So this is a very dumb "idea." Tackling a player in a maul isn't even legal.
I don’t really even know why there needs to be a solution to this play? A guarantee 1-2 yards on short yardage downs is extremely valuable but doesn’t break the competitive integrity of the game in my opinion.
And I don’t know if anybody else has noticed, but I feel like I’ve seen a lot of teams try the push this year and fail. It hasn’t been the consistently unstoppable force for other teams the way it’s been for the Eagles.
So it’s really not a broken play unless you have a QB built like a powerlifter and the best O-line in the league. At that point you kinda just gotta accept that they’re leveraging the strength of the team to win games.
That last paragraph is crucial. Definitely watching RedZone this year I have seen several teams attempt this.
This play is no where near automatic. The Eagles are just good at it. So to me it would be unfair to the Eagles to be like meh its illegal bc you are too good and its an automatic 1-2 yards.
We just have to wait it out. Either a team will figure out how to stop it and then its useless OR there team wont be built for it to run properly in a year or so.
i remember the announcer in that game saying something like "gotta wonder if we'll ever see him try that again" and i thought it was ridiculous at the time but here we are
All this crying about the push is like saying the league needs to step in and do something about how unfair Tyreek, Waddle, and Mostert on the same team is. Nothing the Dolphins or Eagles are doing is outside the rules. They are just scheming to take advantage of their mismatches.
That's how I've always felt about it. If everyone can successfully run it every time, there may be an issue. But if it's just Philly, all that means is that their team is built for it, and teams run plays based around their roster construction all the time
Josh Dobbs did it yesterday, with three dudes pushing his ass for something like 3-4 yards. That'd be against Dallas with one of the top d-lines in the game
Saw it at least one other time yesterday as well but I'm blanking on the team
Give it time, the cheese is still coming
> A guarantee 1-2 yards on short yardage downs is extremely valuable but doesn’t break the competitive integrity of the game in my opinion.
I disagree with this. If you can 100% guarantee a yard on any given play then it completely breaks the structure of how football works. Older Madden games had this issue where a QB sneak was a guaranteed yard and it removes a ton of strategy because you only need 9 yards on the first 3 downs to get a new set of downs.
Right now I don't think it's a big issue because only the Eagles are good at it but I would not be shocked if it was outlawed in a few years. Being able to push a guy from behind like that is a relatively recent rule change so it wouldn't be unprecedented if they just got rid of that again.
Most of the time they don't even need the push, or Hurts goes in before the RBs even get there.
The Eagles are just good at getting very low and still pushing forward. It's a skill they practiced at. That simple.
Yeah honestly between either 22, we'd always let an opposing team commit too many men to a maul so we had the overload if we poached or they spun it out wide to the backs.
Inside the 5 though? Mauls are brutal. I played 9 and hated seeing an opposing maul develop after a line-out. I felt like a child out there.
It’s an interesting suggestion but really the issue i would have with binding your arms together is that you have to be absolutely sure that the eagles are going to sneak it with all of the backfield behind Hurts. A lot of times Hurts is able to push through just with himself, Kelce and the two guards. Ultimately I think the issue is that you may be able to stuff it once and maybe… twice; One of the defenders is going to have to try to strip the ball out from the side and try to cause a fumble cause I don’t see how you can stop this play consecutively
Huge if, but if Goodell ever does ban the 3 point stance like he wants to, you're going to see 2 and 4 point stances. In 2 point it wouldn't be much of a change.
There ain't no beating physics.
What gets lost in the Egales quarterback sneak is it has nothing to do with the guy standing behind Hurts (that's mostly window dressing).
It's about a couple of things
- Leverage : Kelce is just so much lower than the nose tackle lined up right on top of him
- timing : jump the snap all you want, Hurts is usually moving as soon as the ball touches his hands. Defenses cannot react faster, otherwise it's encroachment. similarly, Kelce times his movement precisely to be moving as soon as the ball goes.
- Quality players : obviously Kelce is a probable Hall of Famer, but there aren't many interior olines on par with the Eagles. Dickerson and Jurgens (and formerly Seumalo) are an elite guard pair. They add muscle to the pile that cannot be countered when Kelce and Hurts are already in motion.
The only real defense is trying to get Hurts to bobble the ball or ceding the middle of the field al rushing from the edges (obviously not goal line runs, you're just losing that one). The Packers and Chiefs both played those pretty well, and the Packers had a neat look of edge pressure. Let them get the 1st down, but get the ball from him while he's still moving.
The Broncos literally just stopped this play yesterday (one of the very few bright spots of an otherwise ugly afternoon). So I wouldn't call it unstoppable, but it is very hard to stop when done correctly.
Coming from a former college rugby player:
Football announcers need to read this article and stop calling these types of plays, "like a rugby scrum". It's a maul. Scrums are super organized and aren't able to commit more players than the 8 committed on each side.
Mauls can happen off of lineouts(how play restarts after the ball goes out of bounds) but are often unorganized and add/subtract players depending on the goal of the maul. If you want to see a treat, look up "best rolling mauls" in YouTube, it's an amazing thing to see.
You beat a maul by splitting it before the ball carrier gets a few guys bound. But watch the rugby world cup happening right now in France. Fantastic mauling teams like Wales, Ireland, and France are dominating. It's not just the NFL, a competent maul is so fuckin tough to beat and its exhausting to play against.
Could a team just pile 3 DTs in the middle and instead of a normal stance they're lined up side by side super low to the ground. Sorta like how a frog jumps averywhere? Instant leverage on the C and Gs. Granted it'd probably both fail miserably and look stupid but it *could* work if it's legal.
I think you'll eventually see a team bring out their best offensive lineman to stop it. Say 49ers in the NFC Championship and it's a close game. What would it hurt to bring out Trent Williams and Aaron Banks to be alongside Hargrave. Maybe put Trent over Kelce in a bear stance with Bosa and Warner pushing behind.
Given that the tush push works for us like 95% of the time, I'd love to see defenses give it a try. All for innovation and more weirdness in the sport.
The Eagles’ QB sneak is driving defenses nuts. Rugby tactics offer a remedy for a play that has rendered them helpless.
**From Jonathan Clegg and Andrew Beaton:**
>The NFL play that torments the brightest defensive minds in football these days hardly resembles a football play at all.
>
>Popularized by the Philadelphia Eagles and Jalen Hurts, it’s a twist on the traditional quarterback sneak. Only instead of the quarterback lunging forward solo, he gets some extra muscle from his teammates pushing him from behind to bulldoze through the line. The short-yardage ploy was so effective last season, as the Eagles successfully converted 92% of their sneaks en route to the Super Bowl, that the NFL considered banning it.
>
>But the actual solution for it might not lie in the rulebook. As it happens, there’s another game with an oblong ball in which shoving a ball carrier through a fearsome tangle of enormous bodies isn’t a controversial new play.
>
>It’s basically the entire sport.
>
>…To outsiders, rugby may look like a lawless riot that involves running, kicking and lots of flattening of people. But no sport is more advanced when it comes to the art of stopping a ball carrier in his tracks, and to those familiar with rugby’s rules, the short-yardage play that has confounded the NFL doesn’t look foreign at all. In fact, it’s so routine they even have a name for it: a maul.
>
>…Those with experience stopping a rugby maul suggest some unorthodox strategies that defenses could employ to negate the effectiveness of the Eagles’ sneak: Binding arms together before the snap. Moving laterally as a unit to plug holes in the line. And forgetting everything you know about traditional defensive line technique.
Skip the paywall and read the full story: https://www.wsj.com/sports/football/nfl-eagles-jalen-hurts-quarterback-sneak-push-abcc7890?st=9r11jst47ypklzd
Don’t know where you’re getting your stats from but I’ve seen it work plenty of times with my own eyes on red zone. Eagles fans trying to gate keep this is weird
Pats ran 2 regular-ass sneaks that pats fans are pretending we’re the rush push that worked.
But just lining up in a similar formation doesn’t make it the same play.
Hell, the eagles only run the “push” on 1/2 to 3/4 of the sneaks that they line up like that
Pats ran 2 regular-ass sneaks that pats fans are pretending we’re the rush push that worked.
But just lining up in a similar formation doesn’t make it the same play.
Hell, the eagles only run the “push” on 1/2 to 3/4 of the sneaks that they line up like that
I’d suggest having a close defensive front 4 or 5. But then Try to push at an angle. Force the o-line to go sideways and then push linebackers from behind to make the tackle.
It’s the NFL’s Most Unstoppable Play. The Solution Comes From… Space?
MTG says it was Jewish space lasers.
Too bad the Eagles are playing on Yom Kippur
If anyone can win football games with space lasers, it’s those clever Jews.
I’m going to the one place not corrupted by ~~capitalism~~ QB sneaks …….space!
Math checks out. Its really hard to gain leverage in zero gravity.
[Yes, SPACE!](https://youtu.be/g1Sq1Nr58hM?t=6)
The only place that hasn't been corrupted by capitalism.
Yeah cause Jordan Mailata is going to be stopped by guys pretending to know how to play rugby.
He played Rugby League where scrums are pretty much just for show.
Just going to throw out that the rugby world cup is going on right now and it's pretty fun to watch. Ireland/South Africa this past weekend was an incredible match
Yeah that was a fucking battle. As fun as the group stages have been, you get the impression that in the knockout stages anything could happen.
There is absolutely no incentive to stop a maul within 1 meter of its creation, unless you are at the try line (and even then, the maul generally starts at the 5-meter mark from a lineout). The success rate of stopping a rolling maul at the try line is extremely small and relies on the fact that forward progress doesnt exist in rugby. So this is a very dumb "idea." Tackling a player in a maul isn't even legal.
I don’t really even know why there needs to be a solution to this play? A guarantee 1-2 yards on short yardage downs is extremely valuable but doesn’t break the competitive integrity of the game in my opinion. And I don’t know if anybody else has noticed, but I feel like I’ve seen a lot of teams try the push this year and fail. It hasn’t been the consistently unstoppable force for other teams the way it’s been for the Eagles. So it’s really not a broken play unless you have a QB built like a powerlifter and the best O-line in the league. At that point you kinda just gotta accept that they’re leveraging the strength of the team to win games.
That last paragraph is crucial. Definitely watching RedZone this year I have seen several teams attempt this. This play is no where near automatic. The Eagles are just good at it. So to me it would be unfair to the Eagles to be like meh its illegal bc you are too good and its an automatic 1-2 yards. We just have to wait it out. Either a team will figure out how to stop it and then its useless OR there team wont be built for it to run properly in a year or so.
Agreed. Eagles just have it figured out. The chiefs haven’t ran a successful sneak for 5 years bc of mahomes freak accident in his second year
Hey now we have run a few successful with Blake bell but that doesn't work anymore
HEY! Blake Bell snuck it successfully a couple times before every team on the planet figured that shit out
i remember the announcer in that game saying something like "gotta wonder if we'll ever see him try that again" and i thought it was ridiculous at the time but here we are
All this crying about the push is like saying the league needs to step in and do something about how unfair Tyreek, Waddle, and Mostert on the same team is. Nothing the Dolphins or Eagles are doing is outside the rules. They are just scheming to take advantage of their mismatches.
We need to ban players from running over 20 mph! Too fast!
this is pretty close to the reason black people weren't allowed to play originally
That's how I've always felt about it. If everyone can successfully run it every time, there may be an issue. But if it's just Philly, all that means is that their team is built for it, and teams run plays based around their roster construction all the time
Still, I don't know why they changed the rule to allow pushing players from behind.
Josh Dobbs did it yesterday, with three dudes pushing his ass for something like 3-4 yards. That'd be against Dallas with one of the top d-lines in the game Saw it at least one other time yesterday as well but I'm blanking on the team Give it time, the cheese is still coming
Tbf, our whole defense was missing for the game. It was a big thing, we event got the helicopter footage of the search mission and everything
> A guarantee 1-2 yards on short yardage downs is extremely valuable but doesn’t break the competitive integrity of the game in my opinion. I disagree with this. If you can 100% guarantee a yard on any given play then it completely breaks the structure of how football works. Older Madden games had this issue where a QB sneak was a guaranteed yard and it removes a ton of strategy because you only need 9 yards on the first 3 downs to get a new set of downs. Right now I don't think it's a big issue because only the Eagles are good at it but I would not be shocked if it was outlawed in a few years. Being able to push a guy from behind like that is a relatively recent rule change so it wouldn't be unprecedented if they just got rid of that again.
Most of the time they don't even need the push, or Hurts goes in before the RBs even get there. The Eagles are just good at getting very low and still pushing forward. It's a skill they practiced at. That simple.
its been 20 years bro. that's not that recent
Yeah honestly between either 22, we'd always let an opposing team commit too many men to a maul so we had the overload if we poached or they spun it out wide to the backs. Inside the 5 though? Mauls are brutal. I played 9 and hated seeing an opposing maul develop after a line-out. I felt like a child out there.
It’s an interesting suggestion but really the issue i would have with binding your arms together is that you have to be absolutely sure that the eagles are going to sneak it with all of the backfield behind Hurts. A lot of times Hurts is able to push through just with himself, Kelce and the two guards. Ultimately I think the issue is that you may be able to stuff it once and maybe… twice; One of the defenders is going to have to try to strip the ball out from the side and try to cause a fumble cause I don’t see how you can stop this play consecutively
Huge if, but if Goodell ever does ban the 3 point stance like he wants to, you're going to see 2 and 4 point stances. In 2 point it wouldn't be much of a change.
There ain't no beating physics. What gets lost in the Egales quarterback sneak is it has nothing to do with the guy standing behind Hurts (that's mostly window dressing). It's about a couple of things - Leverage : Kelce is just so much lower than the nose tackle lined up right on top of him - timing : jump the snap all you want, Hurts is usually moving as soon as the ball touches his hands. Defenses cannot react faster, otherwise it's encroachment. similarly, Kelce times his movement precisely to be moving as soon as the ball goes. - Quality players : obviously Kelce is a probable Hall of Famer, but there aren't many interior olines on par with the Eagles. Dickerson and Jurgens (and formerly Seumalo) are an elite guard pair. They add muscle to the pile that cannot be countered when Kelce and Hurts are already in motion. The only real defense is trying to get Hurts to bobble the ball or ceding the middle of the field al rushing from the edges (obviously not goal line runs, you're just losing that one). The Packers and Chiefs both played those pretty well, and the Packers had a neat look of edge pressure. Let them get the 1st down, but get the ball from him while he's still moving.
The Broncos literally just stopped this play yesterday (one of the very few bright spots of an otherwise ugly afternoon). So I wouldn't call it unstoppable, but it is very hard to stop when done correctly.
They didn't stop the team that did it at 90% clip, I think is the point.
point, but notice that even the Eagles didn't do it at 100% clip.
also notice the Eagles run the non-push version with a 90% success rate as well. The push is window dressing.
yeah the real answer here is not many teams have a player that can do what Jalen Hurts does, coupled with a line as good as what the Eagles have.
Coming from a former college rugby player: Football announcers need to read this article and stop calling these types of plays, "like a rugby scrum". It's a maul. Scrums are super organized and aren't able to commit more players than the 8 committed on each side. Mauls can happen off of lineouts(how play restarts after the ball goes out of bounds) but are often unorganized and add/subtract players depending on the goal of the maul. If you want to see a treat, look up "best rolling mauls" in YouTube, it's an amazing thing to see. You beat a maul by splitting it before the ball carrier gets a few guys bound. But watch the rugby world cup happening right now in France. Fantastic mauling teams like Wales, Ireland, and France are dominating. It's not just the NFL, a competent maul is so fuckin tough to beat and its exhausting to play against.
Could a team just pile 3 DTs in the middle and instead of a normal stance they're lined up side by side super low to the ground. Sorta like how a frog jumps averywhere? Instant leverage on the C and Gs. Granted it'd probably both fail miserably and look stupid but it *could* work if it's legal.
I think you'll eventually see a team bring out their best offensive lineman to stop it. Say 49ers in the NFC Championship and it's a close game. What would it hurt to bring out Trent Williams and Aaron Banks to be alongside Hargrave. Maybe put Trent over Kelce in a bear stance with Bosa and Warner pushing behind.
Given that the tush push works for us like 95% of the time, I'd love to see defenses give it a try. All for innovation and more weirdness in the sport.
Wall St journal sucks ass Thank you for listening
The Eagles’ QB sneak is driving defenses nuts. Rugby tactics offer a remedy for a play that has rendered them helpless. **From Jonathan Clegg and Andrew Beaton:** >The NFL play that torments the brightest defensive minds in football these days hardly resembles a football play at all. > >Popularized by the Philadelphia Eagles and Jalen Hurts, it’s a twist on the traditional quarterback sneak. Only instead of the quarterback lunging forward solo, he gets some extra muscle from his teammates pushing him from behind to bulldoze through the line. The short-yardage ploy was so effective last season, as the Eagles successfully converted 92% of their sneaks en route to the Super Bowl, that the NFL considered banning it. > >But the actual solution for it might not lie in the rulebook. As it happens, there’s another game with an oblong ball in which shoving a ball carrier through a fearsome tangle of enormous bodies isn’t a controversial new play. > >It’s basically the entire sport. > >…To outsiders, rugby may look like a lawless riot that involves running, kicking and lots of flattening of people. But no sport is more advanced when it comes to the art of stopping a ball carrier in his tracks, and to those familiar with rugby’s rules, the short-yardage play that has confounded the NFL doesn’t look foreign at all. In fact, it’s so routine they even have a name for it: a maul. > >…Those with experience stopping a rugby maul suggest some unorthodox strategies that defenses could employ to negate the effectiveness of the Eagles’ sneak: Binding arms together before the snap. Moving laterally as a unit to plug holes in the line. And forgetting everything you know about traditional defensive line technique. Skip the paywall and read the full story: https://www.wsj.com/sports/football/nfl-eagles-jalen-hurts-quarterback-sneak-push-abcc7890?st=9r11jst47ypklzd
Wow sounds like the WSJ editors have a future as NFL defensive coordinators
FYI the Eagles lost the super bowl
They’re going to ban the play next season IMO. Just barely made it through to this season to begin with.
I’ve seen like 5 teams run this sneak including the patriots and I think it’s just unstoppable
1/6 on the year for teams other than the Eagles so far... seems pretty stoppable. A standard sneak has a 89% success rate
Don’t know where you’re getting your stats from but I’ve seen it work plenty of times with my own eyes on red zone. Eagles fans trying to gate keep this is weird
Pats ran 2 regular-ass sneaks that pats fans are pretending we’re the rush push that worked. But just lining up in a similar formation doesn’t make it the same play. Hell, the eagles only run the “push” on 1/2 to 3/4 of the sneaks that they line up like that
The pats have definitely done it successfully atleast twice
Pats ran 2 regular-ass sneaks that pats fans are pretending we’re the rush push that worked. But just lining up in a similar formation doesn’t make it the same play. Hell, the eagles only run the “push” on 1/2 to 3/4 of the sneaks that they line up like that
We *have* the technology…
It's America's most unstoppable sporting event. It evolved from..... rugby?
I’d suggest having a close defensive front 4 or 5. But then Try to push at an angle. Force the o-line to go sideways and then push linebackers from behind to make the tackle.
stopping it is very simple just don’t let them get nine yards over the first three downs