After Week 8 of the NFL season, the league’s officiating department sent a video to all 32 teams clarifying the penalty for “assisting the runner,” a little-known violation NFL officials haven’t called since 1991.
The tape opened with a clip of a Bears offensive lineman pulling a running back forward for a first down. Clip No. 2 showed an Eagles quarterback sneak at Arizona — one of seven sneaks Philadelphia ran in its Week 5 game.
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In the clip, three Eagles are lined up in a straight line behind quarterback Jalen Hurts. Tight end Dallas Goedert is lined up next to the left tackle, and receiver Quez Watkins mirrors him on the right side. When the ball is snapped, the player behind Hurts, running back Kenneth Gainwell, runs up to push his quarterback forward. Hurts gets stalled, and it looks like the play might go nowhere when Goedert arrives to yank him over the goal line.
Jalen and the endzone meet again🤝#PHIvsAZ | #FlyEaglesFly pic.twitter.com/M3HR7n1Xxa
— Philadelphia Eagles (@Eagles) October 9, 2022
“Eighty-eight (Goedert) grasps and encircles the quarterback and then pulls him into the end zone,” NFL senior VP of officiating Walt Anderson narrated on the tape. “This would be a foul for assisting the runner. Now, the other player we want to watch here is No. 14, the player right behind the quarterback. This is not a foul, because what he is doing is pushing the runner. Players are allowed to push, but they are not allowed to encircle and pull to assist the runner.”
The tape wasn’t inspired only by the pulling (an actual penalty) but also by how much the Eagles have been pushing this season (a perceived misuse of a vaguely written rule).
“Not one team thinks it’s fair,” said an NFL analytics staffer who was granted anonymity by The Athletic because they are not authorized by their team to speak on the matter. “Every team has complained, but you’re allowed to push so basically they reinforced the rules so they didn’t have to talk about it again.”
This featured example that landed in the inbox of all 32 teams was a play that was actually very light on the pushing, at least by Philadelphia’s standards. An analysis by The Athletic found the Eagles have run 13 sneaks that feature two players lined up to push Hurts forward and three sneaks with three pushers. Two more teams are shown pushing on sneaks on the officiating tape, but each features just a single pusher.
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That’s why the Eagles have caused a stir across the NFL.
“They’ve taken it to another level,” said Giants defensive line coach Andre Patterson. “One guy is on each cheek and one guy is behind, and all three are pushing him forward. That makes it real difficult to stop.”
Opponents may not like the presence of those cheeky pushers, but these Eagles are legal.
Pushing has been allowed explicitly since 2006, when the competition committee clarified blocking rules and rules for use of hands (Rule 12, section 1) to remove the language that prevented pushing. “No offensive player may push the runner or lift him to his feet” became “No offensive player may lift a runner to his feet or pull him in any direction at any time.”
An NFL spokesman said in an email that the change had nothing to do with USC’s infamous “Bush Push” versus Notre Dame a year prior but was prompted by “the difficulty in identifying specific acts and consistently enforcing the prohibition against pushing.” Now Rule 12, Section 1, Article 4 outlaws pulling in any direction, as well as encircling a teammate, and pushing a teammate to assist him in blocking a player from recovering a loose ball.
“That changed big time,” Patterson said. “Because before, the quarterback just had to do it by himself. So once he got stopped it was up to his leg drive to keep going forward, which in most cases is not very good because you got 600 pounds pushing (back).”
According to TruMedia, the Eagles sneaked 32 times this season (we defined a QB sneak as a designed rush by a quarterback under center with 2 yards or less to convert) for a 90.6 percent conversion rate. That’s more than any team has sneaked in a season in this millennium (as far back as TruMedia’s data goes) and more than double the Eagles’ number from last season (14, 92.9 percent conversion). The next closest teams are the 2020 Patriots and the 2010 Jaguars with 21 sneaks each. In the three seasons that Hurts has started NFL games, teams have averaged 7.1 sneaks per season.
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Hurts scored five touchdowns on sneaks in 2021 and five more this season, the top two QB sneak season touchdown totals since 2000. Hurts only started four games in 2020 but has the most sneak attempts (43) of any QB in the last three seasons for a 90.7 conversion rate, which is 11 more than the closest quarterbacks. Jacoby Brissett, Josh Allen and Joe Burrow are tied at 32 sneaks; Brissett’s conversion rate of 84.4 percent is the highest of those.
The Eagles are so good at the QB sneak, they even run it in their own territory (six times this season). They don’t discriminate on the down either. They’ll run it on first (twice) second (three times), third (16 times) and fourth down (11 times). They’ll even run it with two yards to go (once). They’ll run it in Hurts’ first game back from a shoulder injury. They’ll run it three times in a row (at Arizona).
Teams around the NFL are planning to devote offseason studies to figuring out just what the Eagles are doing on sneaks. “People have caught wind of it and seen that it’s too successful not to implement on their own,” said an analytics staffer for another NFL team.
Tom Brady, the all-time QB sneaks leader, is also taking notes. “I like the way they are doing it,” he said last month. “They are making it like a rugby scrum a little bit, putting a lot of bodies in there, which is kind of a new take on it. It will be interesting to see how defenses start to defend that.”
“It’s not a sneak anymore,” Eagles center Jason Kelce said. “There’s nothing sneaky about it. Both teams know what’s coming.”
You might think of the quarterback sneak as a boring play that always looks the same. You might prefer something a little more unexpected on third-and-inches. Some trickery, perhaps.
But Kelce is here to change your mind. Kelce is not only the best practitioner of the sneak, but he’s also the chief spokesman of the play. He jokes on the “New Heights” podcast he hosts with his brother, Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, that their show is, “the official podcast of the quarterback sneak.”
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The 12-year NFL veteran has always been fond of the sneak, but this season he became an evangelist. He coined a tagline to proselytize his play: “92 percent of the time, every time.” (With Hurts at QB in 2022, the Eagles are at 93.3 percent.)
Kelce’s sermon is simple. “I think it’s a highly underutilized play in the NFL,” he said. “As the league becomes more of an analytical league, it’s a number that you can’t negate. There’s no other play that’s going to have that high percentage of assurance.”
On sneaks on third or fourth down with less than two yards to go, NFL teams converted 87.2 percent of the time this season. The Eagles’ conversion rate on third or fourth down is 92.6 percent. Hurts has the strength to squat 600 lbs, but your quarterback doesn’t have to be a quad monster to successfully run the play. Of 22 quarterbacks with a sample size of at least four sneaks this season, only one converted less than 80 percent (Geno Smith, 62.5 percent).
It’s a smart call in short-yardage situations because with a sneak on third-and-short, an offense can bet it won’t get a holding call or lose yards that would kill the drive. If there’s no gain, repeat on fourth down.
“I don’t think it is utilized enough,” said one scout for another NFL team. “It is one of the things that has changed in our game, going for it on fourth down. It’s been allowed to legally push a guy since 2005, we just don’t do it. A lot of times we address short yardage in different ways when the high percentage play is the QB sneak.”
The Eagles have gained the most Expected Points Added (EPA) on sneaks by a massive margin, accumulating 23.91 expected points above the average NFL offense in sneak situations. Philadelphia’s EPA on sneaks is the highest this century. Second place? The 2017 Super Bowl champion Eagles (16.18), who were 11 for 11 on quarterback sneaks with Carson Wentz (10 attempts) and Nick Foles.
“Really since Doug (Pederson) got here it’s been a staple play in our offense,” Kelce said.
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That history of successful sneaks, an all-time offensive line coach in Jeff Stoutland, an athletic quarterback and one of the best offensive lines in football have allowed the Eagles to get the buy-in necessary to make sneaks a core tenet of their offensive identity. With head coach Nick Sirianni running a fast, aggressive offense, the Eagles have gone for it on fourth down 19 times this season and converted 16 times, the most conversions in the NFL this season and second-most in the league since 2000. Philadelphia converts on fourth down 84.2 percent of the time, while the league average is 60.6 percent.
“With Sirianni, he’s going to risk it for the biscuit every time,” said left tackle Jordan Mailata. “Doug wouldn’t.”
Or maybe he would.
In the Jaguars’ shocking wild-card comeback victory against the Chargers on Saturday, Pederson called a quarterback sneak on the two-point conversion that put Jacksonville within 2 points of Los Angeles with 3:22 left in the game. Quarterback Trevor Lawrence jumped and reached for the goal line to convert.
On the Jaguars’ next possession, Pederson threatened the sneak on a crucial fourth-and-2-feet play with the season on the line. Lawrence went under center with a running back and two tight ends in the backfield, but instead of keeping the ball, he handed off to running back Travis Etienne, who swept around the right side for 25 yards.
Disastrous sneaks, while rare, do happen. On Sunday night, Ravens quarterback Ty Huntley left his feet and reached for the goal line on third-and-1 at the 1-yard line, even though he had two pushers to plow him forward had he stayed on the ground. Bengals linebacker Logan Wilson punched the ball out, which defensive end Sam Hubbard picked up and returned for a 98-yard touchdown that proved to be the game-winner.
The average NFL team doesn’t spend much time talking about or scheming up sneaks. For most, it’s an afterthought. In Tampa, where Brady has stopped sneaking at the rate that he used to, right tackle Tristan Wirfs said they never practice the sneak or discuss it during the week. “You just know what it is and what to do,” he said.
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“That was just like another play, to be honest, over there in Tennessee,” said wide receiver A.J. Brown, whom the Eagles acquired in a trade last offseason. “Here, we go into detail about it, and we really install this play. It’s definitely thought about a lot here.”
According to Eagles backup center Cam Jurgens, Philadelphia has a half-dozen sneaks prepared for any given week. They don’t full-out practice them because of injury risk, but offensive coordinator Shane Steichen said in a press conference that they set them up in walk-throughs on third-down days.
“You would be surprised how much detail goes into the play,” Sirianni said in a press conference.
When Dallas played Philadelphia in Week 6, the Eagles ran two sneaks on third-and-1 and converted both for 2-yard gains. On each play, the Eagles lined up two pushers behind Hurts, and the Cowboys sent a player leaping over the top of the pile.
Ahead of their second date with the Eagles in Week 16, Dallas defensive coordinator Dan Quinn scheduled a Zoom meeting with Stuart Lancaster, former coach of the English national rugby team, who now coaches in Ireland. Quinn knew Lancaster from his time as head coach of the Falcons, when Lancaster visited to coach up tackling technique, but now Quinn needed his help with these impossible-to-defend sneaks.
“He said, listen, we are struggling to work out a plan to defend this play,” Lancaster said. “What do you think? ”
Lancaster watched a couple plays and knew immediately what his plan would be. Rugby has three situations similar to the sneak — a scrum, a driving maul and a pick-and-go. Lancaster told Quinn it was important to win what he calls, “the shoulder battle” by matching the Eagles man for man. He didn’t see much value in sending a player leaping over the line.
“It is pretty transparent what is coming, therefore, we need to, man for man, do our best to meet with weight with weight, connections with connections,” Lancaster said. “They are very tightly connected, so your defensive line needs to be tightly connected. You need to be under their shoulders and you almost need to pick up and get under the chest of the offensive guys and drive them backwards.”
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The problem with matching the Eagles numerically, Lancaster acknowledged, is that means they’ll probably beat you with a different play. So be it. “People get caught between a rock and a hard place trying to defend all phases and trying to defend the sneak,” he said. “I would be of the mindset … if they beat us a different way, then they beat us a different way.”
“That, in my opinion, is why at least every team should be threatening the sneak,” Kelce said. “Because the only way you’re going to stop that play is if you really sell out. And that opens up a lot, if the defense is truly going to do that.”
Mailata, who grew up in Australia playing rugby, pointed out a problem with the scrum logic. “We see that on film, if they start doing that, then you can throw the ball,” he said. “So matching bodies for bodies doesn’t help at all.”
Smart quarterbacks know when to call sneaks and when to check out of them, but none of the Eagles players interviewed for this story would answer whether Hurts has ever checked out of sneak. “There’s a whole art to it, and we can’t give that away,” Mailata said.
Thankfully, Patterson, the Giants’ defensive line coach, can help us out here.
Week 14 at New York: third-and-1 at the Giants’ 38-yard line. Hurts lined up under center, with two pushers behind him. Kelce snapped the ball and the offensive line drove forward. Hurts waited a beat and took a step to his left, a fun wrinkle off of a formation that looked like it would be a straight-ahead dive, but the officials blew the play dead because a Giants player was down injured before the snap.
2022, Week 14: PHI at NYG. 3Q 3:59
3-1 at NYG 38. pic.twitter.com/7D5MwbhpGw— Kalyn Kahler (@kalynkahler) January 16, 2023
When the Eagles came back to the line of scrimmage after the timeout, Hurts lined up under center again, and the offensive line’s four-point stance shouted that another sneak was coming. Goedert went in motion behind Hurts, a sneak look the Eagles had shown on tape earlier in the season, but this time, Hurts pitched the ball back to running back Miles Sanders in shotgun, and he took it around the right side for 15 yards.
“They get you to load up in there to stop it,” Patterson said. “And then when they see us all load up in there and stop it, then they run outside, which is real smart.”
2022, Week 14. PHI at NYG. 3Q 3:44
3-1 at NYG 38 (take two) pic.twitter.com/TnEk8sEXkx— Kalyn Kahler (@kalynkahler) January 16, 2023
“That play is a b—- to stop,” said Giants defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence ahead of the team’s week 18 rematch.
“It’s almost inevitable that they’re going to get it,” said Giants linebacker Jarrad Davis. “They get really good knockback on film, more than a lot of teams I’ve seen.”
“Knockback” is the technical term for owning the guy across from you, and the Eagles’ three interior offensive lineman, left guard Landon Dickerson, Kelce and right guard Isaac Seumalo, were put on this earth to achieve it.
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“It takes freaks up front,” said running back Boston Scott.
“Landon is a f—ing drill,” said Mailata.
“I’ve caught myself a couple times when I am supposed to be pushing, I’m watching ’em,” said Scott. “And I’m like dang, they are really pushing them out of the club. This is crazy!”
Backup left tackle Andre Dillard said the offensive line doesn’t practice that knockback against an actual defensive line. They just talk about their rules, then apply them in the games.
So what are the rules? “Well, we don’t want to give out how we do things,” he said.
“They get into four-point stances, and they go foot-to-foot and they basically squeeze it down,” said Bears defensive line coach Travis Smith, whose unit gave up three sneaks to the Eagles, including two touchdowns in Week 15. “And so it’s for us, it’s pad level, who can get lower, who can create that knockback?”
In Week 16, Quinn’s defense got low and kept their feet moving as fast as a dancing Snoopy, but they didn’t commit the numbers to match the players the Eagles did, because Philadelphia still had one receiver out wide on the play. Linebacker Micah Parsons still went over the top and backup quarterback Gardner Minshew got an easy yard for a touchdown.
“I saw Micah stand up, so I knew he was jumping,” Mailata said. “So I changed my technique to meet him, to put my shoulder into his stomach.”
The Eagles also have the advantage of knowing — and switching up — their snap count. Defenses are already extra twitchy in short-yardage situations, anticipating the moment they launch into a primal fight for inches.
“As a defensive player, you got to watch the ball,” Lawrence said. “They know what count they’re going on, so they get a little head start. They can either hard count you and do it, they can go run up to the line and do it. You just don’t know what you’re getting.”
“There’s a lot of people moving before the ball is snapped,” Smith, the Bears’ defensive line coach, said. “And we got called for being in the neutral zone.”
In Week 15, the Eagles hit Smith’s defensive line with what has to be their most calculated and impressive sneak sequence.
First, they ran a QB sneak with two pushers for an easy touchdown, during which Bears defensive lineman Mike Pennel Jr. was called for being offside. The Fox broadcast showed Pennel so low to the ground that his helmet was actually underneath Kelce’s. Smith repeated one word to his guys all week to remind them to get low, “Kneecaps! Kneecaps!” Pennel clearly took it to heart.
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After the touchdown, the Eagles lined up for the two-point conversion from the 2-yard line. Hurts went under center. With a sixth offensive lineman lined up outside the left tackle and a tight end behind that lineman, a tight end outside the right tackle, and another tight end and a running back in shotgun, it looked like another sneak. Then the extra linemen, running back and two tight ends on the line of scrimmage went in motion, Hurts hard-counted and Pennel jumped the snap. Encroachment, and the Eagles moved up to the 1-yard line.
2022, Week 15 PHI at CHI. 4Q 4:20
2-PT attempt from the 1-yard-line pic.twitter.com/3gbjile9UX— Kalyn Kahler (@kalynkahler) January 16, 2023
The Eagles showed a sneak look again, this time with seven players on the line of scrimmage, including two centers in a row, Kelce and Jurgens, the backup. Hurts lined up in between Jurgens and right guard Seumalo, and yelled “set!” which cued the entire line to casually shift over one position to their right with perfect coordination. They hunkered down for the snap, and Chicago stacked nine players inside the box, leaving the two Eagles receivers with single man coverage on the outside. The edge to Hurts’ left was wide open.
“If you don’t have good edge defenders, they just take it right around the edge,” Davis warned during Week 18 after seeing this on tape. “He walked right into the end zone.”
The sneak, more than any other play, favors the offense, “92 percent of the time, every time.”
If Kelce and the 2022 Eagles have indoctrinated you into the church of the sneak, can he interest you in this QB sneak hoodie?
At the end of a conversation with the second NFL analytics staffer, he mentioned one last thing: “They move the ball forward,” he said. “Kelce moves it forward like half a yard.”
This wasn’t the first time I’d heard this accusation. Back in Week 9, when the officiating office sent the video to the teams, the first analytics staffer mentioned Kelce’s habit of moving the ball forward in the same sentence as the pushing, linking the two as an evolution of how the Eagles have grown the sneak.
“It is something so subtle that everyone always warns them but they don’t call it,” the second analytics staffer said. “It’s like assisting the runner, the officials don’t care.”
“If you watch the fourth-and-one and third-and-1 across the league, I think everybody does that,” the Giants’ Davis said. “Kelce does it more demonstrably than a lot of other people.”
“He’s the best at doing it,” said a former NFL assistant coach. “It’s a great tactic, it’s how I would coach it if I was in charge. Try to steal 1/3 to 1/2 a yard every play.”
2022, Week 4. PHI vs. JAX. 2Q 1:10
4-1 at JAX 12 pic.twitter.com/KJS57SNk21— Kalyn Kahler (@kalynkahler) January 16, 2023
The move only makes sense for short-yardage plays under center. The first analytics staffer said Kelce doesn’t do it as much as he used to, now that the Eagles are so good at the rugby sneak. He said Kelce was the O.G. at this whispered-about tactic, and now, more centers have started to incorporate it as teams have taken note that the Eagles never get called for it.
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“Yeah, yeah,” Kelce said ahead of Philadelphia’s Week 18 game when asked about the charge. He leaned back in his chair, folded his arms behind his head and smiled. “It hasn’t been intentional.”
Intentional or not, the reputation follows Kelce around.
“I’ve been warned about it every game this year,” he said. “It’s usually one of the line judges.”
I described to Kelce a specific play from 2019 against the Jets. The former NFL assistant coach interviewed for this story was on that New York staff, and he said during the coaches meeting with officials before the game, Jets coaches gave the officiating crew a heads up to watch for Kelce on short yardage plays.
Sure enough, on a third-quarter fourth-and-1, Kelce takes the ball, flips it and slides it forward, pressing the bottom tip into the ground as he extends his right arm. It looks like the ball has moved an entire football length (a foot!) past what was supposed to be the line of scrimmage. Then-Jets defensive coordinator Gregg Williams loses his mind on the sideline, pointing and screaming at Kelce and then at the line judge, who does not call a false start penalty.
2019, Week 5. PHI vs. NYJ. 3Q 12:14
4-1 at NYJ 40 pic.twitter.com/GZtJZMiISM— Kalyn Kahler (@kalynkahler) January 16, 2023
“The line judge didn’t call it or acknowledge us,” the former Jets assistant said. “We were pretty unhappy.” Surprisingly, after a measurement, the officials ruled that the Jets stopped the Eagles for no gain on the sneak.
“Again, that wasn’t intentional,” Kelce explained after seeing the clip of the play at his request. “You come up here, you’re just trying to get a lean.”
“It’s too risky to do it. It’s not worth it.”
Opponents of the Eagles will point to pushers as the difference-maker this season, but Kelce is such a purist when it comes to the sneak that he sees them more as window dressing.
“To be honest, I think we’ve been very effective on that play without pushers,” he said. “In some ways, I kind of wish we didn’t push because it just brings more people into the box. The pushing is really optically big. But we’ve been very successful at this play for a long time, and I don’t think the pushers necessarily are adding that much. Well, they do add. But I think we would be very highly effective without the pushers too. ”
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The pusher’s first job is to make sure Hurts receives the snap securely. Then they move on to step 2. “Just push with all the will I got,” Sanders said. “As much as I can.”
“Sometimes it’s not needed,” Brown said. “But I’m there for support, you know?”
Much to the chagrin of defensive players, the pushing (and occasional pulling) does seem to be spreading across the NFL lately. Titans quarterback Malik Willis scored his first career rushing touchdown in Week 16 because Titans offensive lineman Jordan Roos dragged him into the endzone. No flag. (Texans safety Jonathan Owens was not pleased.)
Steelers running back Najee Harris had a very helpful push and then pull, completely redirecting quarterback Kenny Pickett on a sneak on Pittsburgh’s winning drive in Week 17.
Imagine being so superhuman strong like Najee Harris you can just pull Kenny Pickett, charging forward with all of his might, out of the pile then redirect and shove him to a first down. Great football IQ, too.pic.twitter.com/sU57C1lcKB
— Julianne Pelusi (@JuliannePelusi) January 2, 2023
“It’s hard to defend because it shouldn’t be legal because people are just pushing players forward,” said Buccaneers safety Logan Ryan. “We’re getting away from what football is. A lot of the rules aren’t really skewed for defense, but until they make a rule to stop that, I guess you can always just give someone the ball, create a circle and push forward and you’ll probably get five yards per carry. That’s the next version of offense.”
“Cry me a river,” said Mailata.
“Until they say that we can’t do that, it’s legal,” Sirianni said in a press conference. “There are a lot of things that defensive coaches do that annoy us as well, on the opposite end, so hey, we are just doing what we can do to put our guys in position to succeed, and then our guys are going out and doing it.”
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“What’s funny is we never practice it, we never drill it,” Mailata said. “We always talk about it. And when we get to it, when push comes to shove, everybody is on the same page.”
Additional reporting by The Athletic’s Charlotte Carroll, Kevin Fishbain and Jon Machota.
(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; Photo: Norm Hall / Getty Images)