Pittsburgh Steelers Steelers Analysis
Can Steelers Use Secret Weapon to Shut Down Eagles’ Tush Push?
PITTSBURGH — Keyed up for a run fit against Philadelphia Eagles MVP candidate running back Saquon Barkley, the Pittsburgh Steelers defense flies downfield on a third down.
The visiting white jerseys swarm Barkley in waves, bringing the big back down before he can use his otherworldly elusiveness to escape. Barkley is obviously short of the line to gain. The Steelers defenders put their fists up to signal fourth down. The defense starts to celebrate.
But wait. Philly has them right where they want them.
The Eagles line up over the ball, quarterback Jalen Hurts takes the snap from under center and two of his eligible receivers push him from behind, moving the pile forward for an all-too-easy Eagles first down.
That scenario isn’t hard to imagine, because the Eagles have done it over and over again. Since Nick Sirianni first came to Philadelphia in 2021 and was paired with quarterback Jalen Hurts and one of the best offensive lines in football, he has used the play to pick up one yard pretty much whenever he needs one.
The Eagles have been a top-five third-down conversion-rate team in each of Sirianni’s first three seasons, and they’ve also excelled on fourth down and at the goal line. Hurts has rushed for an NFL-leading 13 touchdowns this season, despite only carrying the ball 132 times for 544 yards overall.
Almost every team has copied the tush push — or the Brotherly Shove, as they call it in Philly — but almost no one is as good at is as Eagles are. The reason for its popularity is the combination of it being simple for the offense to execute and difficult for the defense to stop.
“That’s a hard one,” Steelers defensive coordinator Teryl Austin said on Thursday. “It’s just physics. They know where they’re going, they’ve got a yard to go, they get a head start because they know the count. There’s no way really to get the heads up on them in terms of when we can attack them or get a jump-start on them. That’s probably why that play is so successful.”
The Steelers have played the Eagles just once since Sirianni took over, a forgettable game in Philly in 2022 where the Eagles threw the ball so effortlessly that they hardly needed to sneak.
But they did. The Eagles lined up on a 3rd and 1 at their own 41 late in the first quarter, and Hurts tried the sneak. The Steelers stood it up for no gain. But Montravius Adams had lined up in the neutral zone.
The Steelers defensive linemen say there’s no secret as to what it takes to make a stop.
“Get low and push your ass off,” nose tackle Keeanu Benton said. “That’s what it is. They get low and they push harder than a lot of other teams.”
The best way to stop it, he said, is to not let them get into one-yard to-go situations. Another is to just make it as uncomfortable as possible for quarterback Jalen Hurts. Most quarterbacks do everything they can do avoid being in a giant pile with a dozen linemen. Hurts does it willingly multiple times per game. But even though he’s much bigger than the average quarterback at 223 pounds, Hurts can still be punished physically for making the effort.
“It’s just a big skirmish, a big pile,” Steelers defensive tackle Isaiahh Loudermilk said. “Who knows what’s going on in it? People ripping at the ball, trying to push him back. It’s just a big skirmish.”
This time around, the Steelers also have an added weapon up their sleeve: the 6-foot-1, 238-pound heat-seeking missile of man they call E-Rob, who can singlehandedly destroy almost any running play. Elandon Roberts first joined the Steelers in 2023, so he wasn’t around for that first attempt. In fact, he’s never faced it, having played in the AFC his entire career.
Will the Steelers send Roberts flying into the A-gap to dislodge Hurts, the football, or whatever else he might come into contact with?
“Man, I think everybody can gives theories about it, but I haven’t had to go against it,” Roberts said. “I’ve seen it on TV, and obviously watching film on it and stuff like that. We’ll see what we came up with.”
The Steelers are newbies to stopping the tush push. The Eagles are the innovators and the originators. Can the new guys, with a secret weapon, be the ones to shut it down?
“Obviously they were the first ones that really came up with this,” Austin said. “They’ve got a level of expertise that others don’t. They just do a great job of it.”
Stay tuned.
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