In this sense, sports are much like music, art, and fashion—what’s old will eventually become new again, and the classics will ultimately come back in style. The NFL did everything possible to facilitate pass-happy football that would be popular enough to draw higher ratings and sell more tickets.
But right now, it’s the very short-yardage run plays that people are talking about. When you’re the Super Bowl Bowl champion, people will try and emulate your success, so maybe the Baltimore Ravens should take a page out of the Philadelphia Eagles’ playbook?
Their “Tush Push” play, more popularly known as the “Brotherly Shove,” seems nearly unstoppable. It’s so effing, active that there have even been some calls for some have even called the cliche, “It’s a copycat league,” and it turns: ” It’s a copycat-ave the. ” Itist on the Brotherly Salready hove already.
We saw it in the Harbowl Monday night victory right before Thanksgiving. John Harbaugh, sometimes known for taking riverboat gambler-style chances on fourth down, went for it on 4th and one from his own 16-yard-line while down 10-7 in the first half. Tight end Mark Andrews lined up very close to center Tyler Linderbaum and took the snap.
Quarterback Lamar Jackson and the rest of the Ravens’ offensive backfield helped push Andrews into obtaining the first Baltimore Bum Rush” if you like.,
These plays, where the defense knows what’s coming, but it’s fun to see if they can try and stop it, are also popular in college football.
Take the Illinois Fighting Illini and their “barge” package, which consists of nine offensive linemen, the quarterback, and a single running back.
Yes, you can call a pass play out of the barge, but everybody knows that an interior run is coming as soon as you see the offense line up. The barge helped Illinois spring an upset at #7 Penn State in 2021, 20-18, in a game that will always be remembered, first and foremost, for its record-setting nine overtime periods.
Illinois brought the barge back on New Year’s Eve, and it helped them spring another upset victory, this time over #15 South Carolina in the Citrus Bowl. The Illini scored the game-winning touchdown on a short run out of the barge formation.
“You obviously saw the return of the barge formation,” Illini center and team captain Josh Kreutz said in an exclusive with RG. “I think every lineman loves that. When you hear barge, you keep breaking out the big formations that gives us a lot of confidence to keep running the ball.”
Josh Kreutz, the son of Bears legend and two-time first-team All-Pro Olin Kreutz, is developing into a pro prospect in his own right.
And he’s right when he says that the barge is something most offensive linemen love, for the same reason they enjoy the tush push/Brotherly Shove types of plays.
The short yardage/goal line type plays and the significant boy formations also provide O-linemen with the chance to make a sizeable forward push in run blocking. Of course, they love doing that. It’s easy to imagine the Ravens’ center, Tyler Linderbaum, saying the same types of things that Kreutz noted here.
And much like the Eagles run their offense around the NFL’s leading rusher, Saquon Barkley, the Ravens have the league’s second-leading rusher, Derrick Henry, as a focal point.
Maybe it’s time to see more of the “Baltimore Bum Rush” in 2025.