Good News: The Tush Push is safe and now the Eagles have to fix it

The NFL Combine came and went without any serious push to ban the Tush Push, and all indications are that there will not be a proposal to eliminate the play this year. Obviously, that’s good news for the Eagles but now, they actually have to fix the thing because last year we all witnessed a huge drop off in the play’s effectiveness.

In 2025, Philadelphia’s success rate on quarterback sneaks dropped to around 63 percent after converting on over 81 percent of them in 2024.

That is a significant decline, and there were two pretty clear reasons for it. The offensive line was nowhere near as healthy last season, which hurt the entire offense in multiple ways. Teams started figuring out how to defend the play, most notably starting with the Lions game. Instead of trying to stuff it up the middle, defenses began collapsing the edges, attacking the pushers, and going for the strip.

Once that blueprint got out, others followed.

Nick Sirianni addressed the Tush Push issues directly at the combine:

“I think there’s some things that teams did this year that they did a good job of being able to stop it. We gotta get back to being able to be as dominant as we were at it, or we find new avenues to be able to convert on third down or in the red zone.”

That is honest. The Eagles have always taken pride not just in running the play but in protecting it with wrinkles off of it, creating just enough doubt in the defense to keep them off balance. That element disappeared last season. Getting it back is a coaching and execution problem, and Sirianni acknowledged both.

The irony of the whole Tush Push situation is not lost on anyone.

The Eagles’ new offensive coordinator Sean Mannion is coming from Green Bay, the team that officially proposed to ban the Tush Push last offseason. He is now the guy responsible for making it work again in Philadelphia. That is a funny turn of events.

The player safety argument for banning the play continues to fall completely flat. Sean Payton was refreshingly blunt about it at the combine this week:

“I don’t think the push sneak — I think if that ever goes away, it’s not a health and safety thing. We discussed that last year for two hours and we just adopted a thousand more kick returns. Which play do you think is more of a health risk? A thousand more kick returns.”

He is right, and at this point everyone in the room knows it. If the play ever gets banned, Payton said, it will be because people simply do not like it. Which is fine to say out loud, but it is a very different argument than the one being made publicly.

Sean Payton calls out NFL for blatant Tush Push bias, says health concerns were BS

The Tush Push is not going anywhere for now.

The Eagles just need to get back to running it the way they used to. The offensive line health is the biggest variable, and if that group stays together in 2026, the success rate should follow. A healthy front five running the Tush Push at full efficiency is still one of the most unstoppable plays in football.

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