The Washington Commanders suffered their first loss of the 2023 NFL Season last week and could find themselves staring at back-to-back defeats as they hit the road to play against the undefeated Philadelphia Eagles.
Against the Buffalo Bills, the Commanders had no shot of moving the football as their offensive line got pushed around and allowed Sam Howell to get sacked nine times on the day.
Howell is partly responsible because he has a tendency to hold onto the football for too long, but nonetheless, the young quarterback will find himself up against arguably the best defensive line in the game this Sunday.
While Washington’s offense will need to figure out ways to push the ball downfield, their defense will have just as many problems trying to slow down Jalen Hurts.
Hurts hasn’t quite looked the same as last year, but he remains a scoring threat because of his running ability.
The Eagles have also mastered goal-line plays by having players push Hurts into the end zone and Commanders defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio believes the play should be banned via Charean Williams of Pro Football Talk.
“I think it’s a nice rugby play, and it’s not what we’re looking for in football. But until it’s outlawed, we’ll prepare for it and get ready to do our best to stop it.” Jack Del Rio said this week, via video from JP Finlay of NBCSportsWashington.com.
Jack Del Rio would like to see Tush Push outlawed. https://t.co/sorOY7NFkz
— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) September 30, 2023
The “tush push” has been giving teams fits for the past two seasons which prompted the NFL’s competition committee to review the play.
Ultimately they didn’t rule to outlaw it, meaning Del Rio and his staff are going to have to find ways to stop the play if they find themselves in that situation.
From a tactical standpoint, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with the play itself so Washington’s just going to have to prevent Philadelphia from getting that close to scoring.
NEXT: Sam Howell Gets Brutally Honest On His Week 3 Performance
