Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles has his hands full stopping the Philadelphia Eagles offense this Monday in the team’s wild card matchup.
Aside from the obvious task of stopping the Eagles stacked offense, Bowles has to figure out how to stop the Eagles “tush push”. So how does Bowles plan to stop this seemingly unstoppable play?
“It’s a big advantage for them,” Bowles said, via Rick Stroud from the Tampa Bay Times. “I think it’s a very good play. The only way you counter that is to try to not get into it. You want to keep them at 5 or more [yards] if you can. But they do a very good job at getting it in. If I had the answer right now, I’d be upstairs diagramming, calling it and writing books on it.”
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Buccaneers linebacker Devin White thinks the key is for defensive lineman Vita Vea to win the battle with Eagles center Jason Kelce.
“I think we put in certain personnel when we know they’re going to run it,” White stated. “Vita gives you kind of an edge and I think I’ll take him over Kelce in the middle all day. Man, we’ve just got to keep them out of it. I think that’s the best way to stop them, is not to let them get into those formations. But at the end of the day, if it does come up, we’ve got have something in play to try and stop it. We’ve just got to have a better push than they do.”
The Bucs, like most teams haven’t been able to stop the “tush push”. Here’s to hoping the team can follow Bowles suggestion of keeping the Eagles in third and long situations. If not, it could be a miserable Monday night for the Pewter Pirates.
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