The tush push has taken the football world by storm. Everyone is at least trying the surefire short yardage play…to varying levels of success, but they’re trying nonetheless. Why? Because the play is unstoppable if you have the right personnel! Now, as is the case with most trends in football, the evolution of it is what you can do off of it. Todd Monken put together a helluva riff on the tush push in Sunday’s win over the Cleveland Browns. If you haven’t seen it, man….it’s a thing of beauty.
What a thing of beauty – it’s the rare “we fooled everyone” trickery in the NFL. And, it’s predicated on the stones of Monken to call it and the feel to understand that it could work. Think about it – where we’re at with the tush push, the play has almost taken on a life of its own. It’s this mythical play, and we’ve all become so obsessed with how to stop it that we fixate on the mechanics of it. Teams load bodies up at the line of scrimmage and seemingly just hope for the best. Well, that’s the perfect spot for a counter punch….to show this, but do that.
The Ravens probably could’ve run this play and moved the chains. Instead, Monken and company saw the opportunity to take advantage of how defenses play the tush push. With all of those defenders condensed in around the line of scrimmage…what would happen if you somehow got a player into space? Well, as you saw…there’d be nothing but green grass in front of him. So, the vision of this play was cutting edge.
But, how about the design? I mean, there are still players at the edges and there’s a safety behind the line. Those guys can move! Well, that’s where the design comes into play. If you move Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry out to the left, you better believe the defense is going to be watching those guys. In fact, I think that’s probably the key to the whole play working because of how that motion gets #33 to move to it. Then, very sneakily, they move Ricard to kick out the end man and there’s a wide gap for Mark Andrews to run through. Because of the movement of Henry and Jackson, it effectively removed the safety as a threat to run Andrews down, and it set up a foot race between Andrews and Carson Schwesinger. It was a well-executed and well-timed play call.
This is Grade A stuff from Monken – it is essentially weaponizing a trend in football to keep defenses guessing. Imagine teams lining up for the tush push, and you, as a defense, don’t know if it’s actually a tush push or not. The Ravens have made it even harder to defend. Now, we’re probably going to see everyone trying something similar. Frankly, for better or for worse, I can’t wait to watch what comes next.
Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, second on Football & Other F Words, analyst for Stacking The Inbox, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, the NFL Draft, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley.
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