Vikings defense tries ‘something a little crazy’ against the Eagles’ signature tush push

The Vikings defense first talked on Thursday about their special plan to try to stop the Eagles’ signature short-yardage rushing play.

“The tush push, it’s like 95 percent successful for Philly, so we had to find a way to try something new, maybe something a little crazy, but try to get it to work,” linebacker Blake Cashman said.

“It definitely worked,” chimed in fellow linebacker Eric Wilson from his locker behind Cashman.

And how did rookie outside linebacker Tyler Batty end up in the position he did on the play?

“’Cause Batty’s a maniac,” Cashman laughed, with Wilson ad-libbing in response: “Certified.”

The Vikings put the 6-foot-6 Batty, fresh off injured reserve for a knee injury, on all fours parallel to the line of scrimmage at nose tackle when the Eagles first lined up for a tush push on fourth-and-1 at their own 45 in the first quarter.

Batty’s right shoulder aligned with Eagles center Cam Jurgens’ helmet.

Locker room consensus postgame, though, matched Wilson’s assessment: The technique worked pretty well, even if not ultimately successful.

“Honestly, didn’t think that was gonna work,” said Redmond, who also added the team didn’t get a real rep of practice on the technique during the week, given its strenuous nature.

The strategy, Batty said, was as simple as “low-man wins” and using angles to force leverage back against the Eagles’ surge.

Cashman said the Vikings defense was shown a clip of another team successfully stopping an attempt at the tush push with a similar strategy.

He thought that team was the Chiefs. If it indeed was, the Vikings’ take on the tactic was a heavy-handed adaptation, which isn’t a surprise from defensive coordinator Brian Flores. Assessment of recent film from Eagles-Chiefs games did not show anything quite like what the Vikings tried Sunday.

“Uh, heavy,” Batty said, but his voice was light. “Heavy. There was a lot of pressure. There was a lot of weight, but it was good.”

The Eagles’ game-opening drive was one of only two opportunities they got for the tush push, as the Vikings defense made a concerted effort to keep them in third-and-long scenarios, many of which Philadelphia converted through the air.

The other came with 42 seconds left in the first quarter on third-and-1, but the Eagles were flagged for a false start before the snap. Philadelphia punted to close the drive after an incomplete pass on the resulting third-and-6.

At the NFL’s spring meeting in May at the Omni Vikings Lakes Hotel in Eagan, a proposal to ban the tush push was unsuccessful. Ownership from 10 teams, including the Eagles, reportedly voted against the ban, leaving it two teams shy of passing.

The Eagles are not the only team to attempt tush-push style plays — the Vikings did on back-to-back plays in their 2023 overtime loss to the Bengals — but Philadelphia is by far the most consistent and successful at doing so.

So far this year, Philadelphia sits at a 75% (9-of-12) success rate on fourth-down conversions, while the rest of the league averages a 60.3% conversion rate.

An in-broadcast graphic on FOX at the time of the first tush push attempt Sunday credited Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts as 5-of-7 on third-and-1 this year and 4-of-4 on fourth-and-1.

While the Vikings are unlikely to need that defensive tactic again this season, it made for a memorable professional debut for Batty, who signed as an undrafted free agent out of BYU this spring.

He made three tackles, defensed a pass and had a QB hurry in the preseason but was placed on injured reserve with a knee injury on roster cutdown day.

Batty said that a few weeks into his mandatory four-game absence on IR, which ended up being five games, he started “itching” to get back to action. He said he feels “phenomenal” now.

“They needed someone to go in there and to put their nose in it, and I didn’t have a problem doing that, so they tossed me in the middle,” Batty said.