The Eagles’ Tush Push got a helpful nudge from a Scottish rugby coach

When center Jason Kelce mentioned on his New Heights podcast in September that the Eagles had worked with a “Scottish guy” on their iteration of the quarterback sneak dubbed the Tush Push, longtime Scottish rugby union coach Richie Gray had a feeling his cover was blown.

As far as Gray knows, he’s the only rugby coach who hails from Scotland with ties to the NFL. Currently, Gray is the skills and contact collision specialist for Rugby Club Toulonnais, a professional rugby union club in Toulon that competes in the Top 14, France’s top league. He served as the Miami Dolphins’ tackle and collision specialist in 2016 and has since lent his expertise to other NFL teams and players.

» READ MORE: The Eagles’ Tush Push is their superpower. The Dolphins couldn’t stop it. No one can.

Soon after the release of the podcast episode, Gray began to receive phone calls from sleuthing acquaintances who managed to link him to the Eagles.

“I never really talk about who I work with,” Gray told The Inquirer. “I’ve worked with a number of coaches in the NFL over the last seven or eight years, and players. I don’t really discuss who I work with. It’s a kind of unwritten rule of integrity, really. And nobody would have known at all that Richie Gray was involved with the Eagles until it came out on the podcast.”

That integrity is rooted in an understanding of how precious competitive advantages are in the NFL. As coach Nick Sirianni explained earlier this season, the league is rife with parity, and teams look to capitalize on every advantage at their disposal. Jeffrey Lurie and the Eagles are no different.

The Tush Push is a play of inches within a game of inches. The Eagles were so adept at it last season that they converted on 29 of 32 attempts (90.6%). But true to the mantra emblazoned above the entrance of the Eagles’ locker room at the NovaCare Complex, they’re always looking to get “1% better,” even at a play that surpassed 90% efficiency in 2022. Every inch matters to the Eagles, and that was evident to Gray when he was invited to the facility in April.

“You can see why they’re a good team, because any coaching groups that want to get 1% better and will look to anywhere to do that, it’s all marginal gains, isn’t it, you talk about?” Gray said. “You know that they’re on the right track.”

Initially, Gray wasn’t solely brought to Philadelphia to share his thoughts on the Tush Push and, as Kelce specified on his podcast, how to stop it.

The Eagles’ vice president of player performance, Ted Rath, reached out to Gray on behalf of assistant inside linebackers coach Tyler Scudder and the defensive coaches, inviting him to the NovaCare Complex this offseason to work with the team on tackling. Rath initially met Gray when the former spent the 2016 season with the Dolphins as their assistant strength and conditioning coach. While working for the Dolphins, Gray admired Rath and Dave Puloka, the team’s head strength and conditioning coach, for their shared interest in blending football technique and skills into their strength and conditioning programs.

“You’re finding now that more of the performance guys are getting more involved in that, which I think’s a great crossover,” Gray said. “And also it means that the players are working in the gym, doing certain movement principles that they know are going to help them when it comes into the game. So the game is changing that way slightly, which is great. And these two guys are at the forefront of it.”

» READ MORE: Grading each member of the Eagles’ rookie class at the midway point

For the last 15 years, Gray has specifically focused on coaching contact and collision in rugby and American football. Before that, he exclusively coached rugby union defensive systems. He has developed tackling methodology, analysis, and skills programs for both football and rugby organizations and players, including USA Football, the National Federation of High Schools, and World Rugby. His company Global Sports Innovation Performance created technical training equipment that complements his tackling methodology and is used at various levels in football across the U.S., including in the NFL.

At first, the Eagles planned for Gray to take a look at the Eagles’ tackling, from the techniques they teach to the drills they utilize. But before he arrived, offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland contacted Gray and asked him if he would also like to spend a day with the offense. He had a play — the Tush Push — that he wanted to show Gray, seeking his opinion on both how he would break it up and how he would make it better.

That’s where Gray’s willingness to go into the details of the conversation ends. But the key point of the discussion, which Kelce relayed on his podcast in a Scottish accent that sounded to Gray like a cross between “a pirate and Robin Williams,” was that there’s very little an opponent can do to stop organized mass. The Eagles offense, according to Gray, organizes better than any opposing defense.

“There’s four key things that the Eagles have,” Gray said. “One, they’ve got a world-class, possibly the best in the game, O-line coach. They’ve got world-class personnel that are within the play. Action will always beat reaction. And the last thing is they tactically and technically do it better than anyone else in the league at the moment because the percentages and stats don’t lie.”

That group of world-class personnel starts with quarterback Jalen Hurts, who is responsible for getting his legs moving and carrying the ball for a conversion, a score, or to just pick up a yard or two. Hurts has been well-known for his ability to squat 600 pounds in college.

He receives a boost from the pair of skill players pushing him from behind, hence the play’s various nicknames, but left tackle Jordan Mailata insists that the players up front deserve credit, too. He called the efforts of the two skill players pushing Hurts a “fail-safe” in case the offensive line can’t do its job and Hurts can’t get his legs moving.

“It drives me crazy when people are like, ‘They’re pushing him for a first down!’” Mailata said. “It’s like, what about the O-line, you know? What about the O-line?”

At 6-foot-8 and 365 pounds, Mailata comprises a very large fifth of the Eagles’ offensive line. He’s positioned to the left of 2022 Pro Bowl left guard Landon Dickerson, who is 6-6 and 332, making them the largest starting tackle-guard duo, left or right, by body mass index in the league. Combine them with five-time first-team All-Pro center Kelce and two-time first-team All-Pro right tackle Lane Johnson, and the Eagles have a powerful and experienced group working in lockstep to pave the way for Hurts.

Still, according to Gray, no individual player is more important to the play’s success than another.

“Everybody has a role,” Gray said. “And everyone must carry that role out to absolute perfection. And remember, it didn’t work against the Commanders because Jalen Hurts fumbled the ball. So sometimes, teams will get it wrong, but if every player technically is on point and they are all working together, it’s one mass coming towards you. It’s incredibly difficult to stop.”

Thousands of miles away from the U.S. in Europe, Gray keeps up with the latest NFL happenings. The current discourse equating the Tush Push to a rugby play has him in stitches.

When Kelce mentioned that a “Scottish guy” visited the Eagles to discuss the Tush Push, he subsequently added that opponents have turned to consulting rugby players to help them figure out how to stop it, linking the sport to the play.

“The minute you mention rugby next to it, it automatically got taken as some sort of rugby play,” Gray said. “The QB sneak, Brotherly Shove, Tush Push, whatever you want to call it, is nowhere near a rugby play.”

To understand why the Tush Push isn’t a rugby play, it’s important to remember football’s roots. Early American football was rugby, years before football’s introduction of downs, the forward pass, and the general shift away from mass plays. Football’s first rule book, called the Inter-Collegiate Football Rules, was written in 1876 at the Massasoit convention in Springfield, Mass. Aside from some American English grammar substitutions and a few concept additions, including the touchdown, it is nearly indistinguishable from the Laws of the Rugby Football Union written in England in 1873.

» READ MORE: The NFL needs to ban the Eagles’ ‘Tush Push.’ It’s hurting too many people’s feelings.

The two sports have evolved down different paths since then while maintaining some technique crossover, like the one-on-one tackle. But while Gray said that’s pretty much where the similarities end, the Tush Push is most frequently compared to two rugby plays — a scrum (short for “scrummage”) and a maul. Both plays can be found in the two aforementioned rule books.

In a scrum, which is a method of restarting play, members of both teams are bound together in rows. They vie for possession of the ball by attempting to move it backward with their feet.

A maul takes place when the ballcarrier binds with at least one of his teammates and at least one of his opponents. Teammates push the ballcarrier, and the bound opponents, toward the goal line, but they must enter the maul from behind their teammate closest to the back of the formation.

Both plays take time to create and build. The Tush Push takes place within a few seconds.

“In football, it’s off the snap,” Gray said. “So that’s a massive difference, again, to why it’s so different to a rugby play. And the snap always gives the attacking team the advantage, because they decide when the play begins. If the defense decides to jump, it’ll be a flag. So that’s where I say action always beats reaction.”

So why would the Eagles bring in a rugby coach to help with a non-rugby play? Gray isn’t exclusively a rugby union coach. He has been involved in the NFL now for the last eight years and has spent his entire career figuring out how to break up attacking systems.

This season, the Eagles have continued to excel at the Tush Push, converting or scoring on 21 of 25 attempts (84%), according to Sports Info Solutions. They’ve continued to add wrinkles, including a Tush Push fake that they ran against the Washington Commanders in Week 8 that featured a handoff to running back D’Andre Swift for a touchdown.

Regardless of how opposing teams and their fans feel about the play and the Eagles’ success at it, Gray asserts that it’s good for the growth of the sport because it has everyone talking, both in the U.S. and internationally. Plus, anyone can do it, Gray pointed out. The Eagles and their personnel just do it better.

Since 2022, the Eagles have converted or scored on 50 of 57 push sneaks (87.7%) in the regular season. More teams have tried to copy them in 2023, but heading into Week 10 according to CBS Sports, the rest of the NFL was 43 of 60 (71.7%).

As long as the Tush Push remains a legal play next season, the Eagles’ mission to get 1% better at “the most successful play in history,” as Mailata calls it, will continue.

“Next year, I guarantee they’ll be looking at it again to refine it just as any world-class coaching group and building do,” Gray said. “You always want to stay ahead of the curve.”