Saquon Barkley calls tush-push opposition "soft"

On Eagles player who would potentially benefit from a tush-push ban is running back Saquon Barkley. He lost plenty of potential touchdowns to his team’s signature play.

But Barkley wants to the Eagles to keep it. And he had some fairly strong comments for those who want to kill it.

“I think it’s soft, to be honest,” Barkley said on the Exciting Mics podcast with teammates Reed Blankenship and Cooper DeJean, via Nick Brinkerhoff of USA Today. “Everybody can do it. It’s not a play that we only can do. We happen to have one of the best and biggest O-lines, and Jalen Hurts can squat 600 pounds. That’s not our fault.”

Barkley’s remarks were made before the unsuccessful vote to eliminate the play. Still, 22 of 32 teams wanted to dump it. That’s 68.75 percent of the entire league.

“Josh Allen is super big, they’re not successful with it,” Barkley said. (The Bills use a different version of it, and they’re the only other team whose success compares to Philly’s.) “Lamar Jackson is one of the best running quarterbacks of all-time, they’re not successful with it. So it’s not something that everyone can’t do. Them trying to eliminate it, I think that’s kind of lame.”

Barkley made another important point: “And the teams that want to get rid of it are the teams that gotta see us two or three times a year.”

He’s right about that. Only two NFC teams joined the Eagles in supporting the ban — the Lions and the Saints. Of the 17 games the Eagles will play in 2024, only one opponent (Detroit) voted to let the Eagles keep their play.

The effort to get rid of the play was based on the hypothetical concern that it can create a safety issue, even without the data to prove it.

“Everybody can do it, there’s no health issue,” Barkley said.

The effort to ban the play will not end. The league office will keep studying the tush push. Which quite possibly means the league office will keep looking for proof to help twist two more arms to get the owners from 68.75 percent to 75 percent.

Think of it this way. If the NFL Constitution & Bylaws required a two-third supermajority to change the rules instead of three-fourths, the tush push would already be gone.