Chess Not Checkers: Eagles Make Sure To Kill The Narrative About The Tush Push Being "Unstoppable" Just In Time To Take The Play Off Life Support
It was the 2nd week in a row where the Philadelphia Eagles men's professional football team decided to keep all their fans up way past their bedtime to watch a defensive battle. If you want excitement, and explosiveness, and an energized serving of "grab ahold of your nuts and let's really open this bitch up" type of football? Well the Philadelphia Eagles are not the team for you. They are going to win games by strangling their opposition to death on defense, while constantly making their opponents still feel like they're just one or two plays away from being right back in this thing with their defense.
That's neither here nor there. The game itself tonight didn't really matter just as long as the Eagles got a win over a big time conference opponent. It's what they constantly do. They look downright horrific at times while doing it, but they always find a way to pull out the wins against steep competition.
No. What tonight was all about was preservation. It was about taking the one thing in the world that the Philadelphia Eagles do better than anybody else, and making sure they can keep doing it for the rest of eternity. Because outside of all the AJ Brown stuff, the #1 conversation surrounding the Eagles is that this HAS to be the last year that the Tush Push is allowed before it gets banned by the league. The play has been considered "unstoppable". It has been considered "impossible to officiate".
The Eagles couldn't afford to let those narratives continue to gain momentum. They needed to find a way to flip the script. And what was saw tonight was a flawless execution of that plan. Tyler Steen gets called on the false start, even though the Lions were lined up in the neutral zone. They get stuffed late in the night on a crucial 4th down that could have iced the game. All of a sudden, the play isn't so unstoppable anymore. All of a sudden, teams aren't bitching about the officiating when the wrong call gets made against the Eagles.
This team is staying two steps ahead of everybody. Just when everybody was sure this was going to be the final year of the Tush Push's existence, the Eagles find a way to go out there and put out the fire. Not only did they pick up a massive win against the Lions tonight, but they may have just secured a massive win for the future of the Tush Push. Just let the play turn into the butt of the joke for a few more weeks, and all of a sudden everyone will lose focus on trying to ban it from the game.
Sidenote: The offense is still a disaster, but holy shit is this Eagles defense turning into something special. For all the shit Howie Roseman has had to eat this year with some of the moves he's made, the Jaelan Phillips pick up could end up being one of his greatest ever.
@JordieBarstool