The Chiefs looked dominant against QB sneaks in their last game. Should the Eagles worry about the Tush Push?
"They’re obviously very good at it," Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said of the Chiefs on short-yardage plays. "We’re really good at it, too.”
Super Bowl LIX might come down to the smallest details.
The Kansas City Chiefs stopped Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen on three of his five QB sneak attempts in the AFC championship game, including a pivotal and controversial fourth-and-1 stop in the fourth quarter that set up a go-ahead score for Kansas City.
So should the Eagles worry about the Chiefs’ defense shutting down one of their most important and effective plays: the Tush Push?
“Yeah, you look at every time you go into a game — I don’t think it’s a secret — teams are going to know that we’re running that,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said Wednesday on WIP-FM. “And any time you go into that, you look at all the tape. You watch every quarterback sneak that the defense has defended for the past couple years. You don’t just stop it at this year. Like, how has this coordinator planned to stop this for the past two-three years? So you’ll do that and we’ve looked at the ones from the Buffalo game. They’re obviously very good at it. We’re really good at it, too.”
But are the Chiefs really that good at it? There’s no doubt that the Bills and quarterback Josh Allen are right up there with the Eagles in terms of converting short-yardage situations. According to CBS Sports, Allen entered Sunday’s game against the Chiefs having converted 20 of his 21 third- and fourth-down sneaks this season. On the flip side, while Pro Football Reference has the Chiefs listed as the ninth-best defense in the NFL on all fourth-down situations, CBS says Kansas City actually struggled to stop QB sneaks this year, allowing 32 consecutive conversions heading into the AFC title game.
Did the Chiefs figure something out? Or was it a blip? And will their success carry over against the Brotherly Shove in the Super Bowl? Regardless of the numbers before the Bills game, Sirianni thinks the matchup in the trenches on short-yardage situations will be an example of strength vs. strength.
“When you get into games like this, there’s a lot of moments where it’s good on good,” Sirianni explained. “Sometimes you go into a game and you look at maybe the turnover battle and you say, ‘Hey, we’ve got a big advantage here because we’ve taken care of the ball and they haven’t.’ And you kind of go into that. But when you go into this [matchup], it seems like there’s a lot of good on good. …
“When Player A is really good at something and Player B is really good at something, when one coach calls the right call and the other coach calls the right call, what gives in those scenarios? Well, it comes down to your details and your fundamentals. And so that’s going to be a big part of this game, your details and fundamentals as you go through.”
Given that the spread for the Super Bowl is just 1.5 points, in favor of the Chiefs, it’s expected to be a close contest, one in which a Tush Push conversion could be the difference between winning and losing. The Chiefs know a thing or two about winning close games — including the postseason, they’ve had 12 one-score games this season ... and have won every one. In fact, they’ve won 17 straight one-score games.
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“That’s a very impressive stat,” Sirianni said. “That means that when they get into those moments, they find ways to win. You just continue to do the things you’ve done — I think our details have been really good throughout the year. ... It’s about how you tackle, it’s about how you block, it’s about how you get off blocks, it’s about how you take the football away, it’s about how you protect the football, and it’s about how you catch the football.
“And so, those details will always be constant in this game. The team that does that better will have the better chance to win. And we’ll focus on our details all week. ... At the end of the day, we’ve got to go out there and execute and call a good game as coaches and get the guys ready to play.”
The Eagles haven’t been too bad themselves in one-score games this season, going 9-2, with losses coming in Week 2 against the Falcons and in Week 16 to the Commanders, a game in which they got out to a big lead before Jalen Hurts suffered a concussion.
Like Sirianni said, it’s “good vs. good” — and something’s got to give.