Lost among the shocking upset pulled off by the New York Giants on Sunday was the final nail being driven into the coffin of the Tush Push.
Its death has been long overdue.
Honestly, the play should have been outlawed the week after it first appeared. Over the last offseason, the Green Bay Packers did their level best to kill it.
One suspects there will be a 31-1 vote to ban the Tush Push, and possibly about five seconds after the Super Bowl ends in February.
The truth is, the Eagles will have no one to blame but themselves for its demise.
In recent weeks, footage has been popping up exposing just how the Eagles have become the only team that runs the play better than the other 31. They’ve been cheating.
Far too many times, Philadelphia’s offensive line is lined up offside on the play.
A majority of the other times, the Eagles are false starting on the play.
Sometimes, they’ve been doing both. Because of the mass of humanity piled up at the line of scrimmage, the officials can’t see the infractions.
If the play cannot be properly officiated, then it needs to be gone.
Right now, the Eagles’ recent run of success now has a big, ugly asterisk attached to it. Just like the one that taints the Patriots’ championship run during the Bill Belichick/Tom Brady era in New England.
They cheated, at least twice that they got caught, and that will always degrade what they did.
When the Eagles ran four straight tush pushes to take a 17-13 lead over the Giants, the second of which should have been flagged for a false start to set up a fourth and six, the entire nation had seen enough.
Outside of Philadelphia, no one in the country wants to see this garbage anymore. After this season, they won’t.
The league already has a “replay assist” system that helps officials on the field. This system should be expanded to allow the eye in the sky official to call obvious penalties that are missed on the field.
Such as all the false starts the Eagles have been getting away with.
It should also be used to catch clear infractions officials are blocked from seeing.
There have been a few missed face mask penalties in recent years that could have changed the outcomes of games.
Maybe even a way to overrule a bad call by an official too? When a defender is flagged for pass interference despite never touching the receiver, for example.
Or when a pass rusher stumbles on his own and the ref assumes he must have been held and throws the flag, when in fact there was no hold committed by the offensive lineman?
We have the technology. It’s time to use it.
Get the calls right and get the non-football plays out of the game.
That alone would improve the NFL more than anything else.
Now, about this ridiculous dynamic kickoff experiment and playing regular season games overseas, Mr. Goodell…
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