Is the Philadelphia Eagles’ “Tush Push” unstoppable?
Statistically, no, it’s not. Even at its peak in 2022, the play got a first down on 93 percent of attempts — 25 of 27, including 6 for 6 in Super Bowl LVII. Last season, they were down to 83 percent. But taken literally, that’s “stoppable” seven and seventeen percent of the time.
But what about how it feels to the team it’s being used against? Does the pain train rolling behind 1600-odd pounds of blunt force actually feel “stoppable” to the team tasked with stopping it? Let’s ask Will Grier, backup quarterback for the 2022 Dallas Cowboys, recipient of many a Tush Push slammed directly through their faces.
“It’s unstoppable,” said Grier to ESPN earlier this season. Well, okay then.
There’s something about the Tush Push that just feels unstoppable. Watching the Eagles every week, one yard feels like zero, especially with Saquon Barkley and Jalen Hurts in the backfield, two progenitors of the offseason 600-pound-squat Instagram video. With that much muscle slammed into a single central point on a football field, it has to feel pretty hopeless.
The Tush Push’s dominance got me wondering about if it’s the most unstoppable play in sports history. My gut reaction was “no,” since I’m hard-wired to reject recency-bias-based takes that might appear on First Take or on local talk radio. But when I got to thinking about what play could be more unstoppable, I hit a conceptual wall that not even the Tush Push could break through:
What even is a play? And what does unstoppable even mean?
We’re going to have to answer both questions if we want to crown a play the most unstoppable in sports history, so let’s crack our knuckles and create complex theoretical frameworks with which to answer a question that nobody actually asked. Who’s with me?
(cracks knuckles)
In my view, a play is something that looks to accomplish a goal and progress the state of the game. Obviously, passes or runs in football are plays, as are any shots or saves in most sports that have a “shooting” element. In addition, anything “designed’ is a play, like a set piece in soccer or a pick-and-roll action in basketball.
But there has to be an order of magnitude here. Small movements that the sports itself couldn’t exist without are not plays, such as passes in basketball or hockey. Additionally, the defense has to be given an opportunity to prevent the play’s success, which disqualifies things like QB kneels. I’m also blanket removing kicking and punting in football, since the defense is put at a wild disadvantage in those cases.
For example: in baseball or softball, an at-bat is a play, but a pitch is not. It’s not like the hitting team is allowed to designate a player to dive in front of the pitch before it reaches the plate like Tom Cruise blocking a sniper bullet at the end of Mission Impossible 8.
By this definition, no play in the history of sports has even been completely, statistically unstoppable. No play has a 100 percent success rate, so long as we use a stringent enough definition. There’s also the question of difficulty and scale, so we’re going to have to pick some contenders with abnormally high success rates for their context and then see if our “unstoppable” definition helps us pick which one is the best.
Here are the four contenders for the Most Unstoppable Play Ever Award (MUPE), which will be named after its inaugural winner:
The Contenders:
- Jacques Plante facing a shot in the NHL in 1970-1971 — Save Percentage: 94.4 percent
- Shaquille O’Neal attempting a shot within 5 feet of the basket in the 2000-2001 NBA — Shooting Percentage: 75.1 percent
- Philadelphia Eagles “Tush Push” in 2022 — First Down Rate: 92.5 percent
- Barry Bonds stepping into the batter’s box in 2004 — On Base Percentage: 60.9 percent
First and foremost, congratulations to all the nominees. These stats are all utterly ridiculous, born out of the tremendous skill and hard work of the players involved. But in order to narrow down our list, we’re going to need to rely on figuring out what “unstoppable” actually means, since all of these are literally stoppable. If your favorite is eliminated, I sincerely apologize.
First Cut: 1970-1971 Jacques Plante facing a shot
Our first elimination is going to be Mr. Plante, and really the entire sport of hockey. No disrespect to the Montreal Canadiens icon and truly one of the most important players in hockey history — like, the dude basically invented the modern goalkeeper position — but hockey is just way too fluid to call a save “the most unstoppable play ever.” Plante’s record isn’t even that abnormal for his time or for later years; he’s only four-thousandths ahead of second place, and several recent goaltenders have come within striking distance, as recently as Linus Ulmark two years ago.
Fluidity is certainly an issue here, but Plante’s elimination also illuminates the issue of setting your own goals for the play versus having them set for you. Making saves was quite literally his whole job, and the other team had no choice but to try and score on him. There was no alternative, and Plante wasn’t really deciding to make saves. He just had to, and he was great at it.
Second Cut: 2000-2001 Shaquille O’Neal within 5 feet
Next up, we’re axing the Big Diesel and learning about how if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying. Yes, Shaquille O’Neal made 75 percent of his shots within five feet, which is a positively insane number given how many shots he attempted from that range. It’s probably not the highest ever even adjusted for his huge shot total given how many great centers the game had in its early days, but the NBA has only been tracking range data since 1997, so we go with what we have available to us.
The problem was that there was literally a blueprint to stop Shaq: foul him. Sure, it’s not technically legal, but Shaq never could figure out how to hit free throws and make teams pay for hack-whack-and-smacking him every time he caught the ball in the paint. He still felt unstoppable if he got a deep seal and was plenty destructive even with the blueprint out on his weakness, but he can’t win the MUPE award without making free throws. Maybe in a different timeline Shaq did have the most unstoppable play, in the horrifying universe of an 85 percent free throw-shooting titan. But unfortunately, it’s not this one.
Runner-Up: The 2022 Philadelphia Eagles “Tush Push”
Winner: 2004 Barry Bonds at bats
Again, congratulations to the Eagles for making the list, but they are going to fall short at the hands of Barry Bonds and his medicinally-enhanced on base percentage. Like I said, with the MUPE award, if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying.
The 2022 Tush Push is statistically much more unstoppable than Bonds getting on base — we’re talking 92.5 percent to 60.9 percent — but the money is made in the fine print. While the Eagles’ success rate on the Tush Push was (and still is) a very effective way to get one yard, it’s not like they’re the only team in history to be good at getting one yard.
The Eagles’ 2022 number looks pretty unreal until you see Tom Brady’s career QB sneak percentage: 90.5 percent. That’s only two percent worse, which is important over time but not nearly as important as how nuts Bonds was compared to his peers. 60.9 percent seems pretty stoppable — opposing teams were getting Bonds out 39.1 percent of the time — until you realize how completely untenable that number is in modern baseball.
Here are a few stats to seal this argument: in 2004, Bonds’ 60.9 percent was 14 entire percent higher than second place Todd Helton, whose 46.9 percent would still be better than the best season of every single player currently in the MLB not named Juan Soto, who got on base 49 percent of the time in 2020.
But Soto is the exception that proves the rule: Bonds is the only player since 1960 to get on base more than 49 percent of the time. Even his other steroid-era buddies couldn’t measure up. And even if we include pre-1960 numbers when pitchers weren’t nearly as skilled and velocity hadn’t taken over the game, he’s still five whole percent clear of Ted Williams in 1941.
The Tush Push’s unstoppability may be more of a function of its goals than its actual ability. Its objective is just to get one yard, something NFL teams are pretty good at in general. But Bonds created a statistical straightjacket for opposing pitchers: no team can plan for someone getting on base that much, and generally assume the best players they’ll face will be somewhere around 42 percent.
Modern-era pitchers had literally no answer relative to what else they were dealing with. All things considered, Bonds stepping into the batter’s box in 2004 is the most unstoppable play in sports history, making Barry Bonds the winner of the inaugural Most Unstoppable Play Ever award. He may never get into the Baseball Hall of Fame, but I hope he takes pride in this accomplishment. He certainly sacrificed a lot of credibility to get there.
