The Baltimore Ravens added a wrinkle to the Tush Push pantheon in Week 10 with a fascinating play design, but it didn’t go off completely without a hitch.
Baltimore picked up a key first down in the second half of their eventual win of the Minnesota Vikings, and they did so with some trickeration. The Ravens lined up like they were going to use tight end Mark Andrews in some variation of the Tush Push play popularized by the Philadelphia Eagles.
Instead of Andrews diving into the line of scrimmage, though, he turned and pitched the ball to quarterback Lamar Jackson, who beat the defense to the corner for a first down.
John Harbaugh Credits Ravens Staff for ‘Tush Push’ Play
The idea for the play came offensive coordinator Todd Monken, and his boss, Ravens head coach John Harbaugh, was quite impressed with his staff’s ability to come up with something new.
“It’s a very creative play. I give the coaching staff credit. Todd and the guys (get) all the credit in the world for that, for coming up with that idea,” Harbaugh told reporters in his early-week press conference the day after the game. “That was one we’ve been working on for a while and trying to get that kind of honed up. I don’t know that anybody’s really done that before, that I’d noticed, and so we had to work through the kinks in practice.”
As you can see in the replay, though, it wasn’t perfectly executed. Andrews’ pitch toss was a little behind Jackson, who made a wildly athletic play to catch the ball without breaking too much of his stride before running it around the corner.
“I thought it was a great catch. Yes, it was a great catch. I did gulp for one second,” Harbaugh admitted. “I was very thankful that Lamar was the guy catching it. He has great hands, and he didn’t even miss a stride. He just pulled it right in like it was nothing.”
Ravens Open Up Playbook With Lamar Jackson Back
The Ravens are no strangers to running the Tush Push or any variation of the controversial play. Typically, it is Andrews under center, which makes sense. He’s much bigger than Jackson, for starters, and he’s less likely to get hurt, especially given Jackson’s injury history.
Some might argue that the Ravens could have saved that wrinkle for a bigger spot. However, after a 1-5 start, seemingly every spot is a big one for Baltimore, and by putting it on tape, it’s one more thing opposing defenses have to worry about.
“Then the other one was the quarterback sweep to the left; (that) was a check-with-me-type play that we had been working on for a few weeks, so that now those have been run, maybe it will show up again in some form or some other thing we have to come up with,” Harbaugh said.
“Those are the things that win games for you.”
Unsurprisingly, when there was some momentum from other teams around the league to potentially ban the Tush Push, the Ravens were reportedly one of the teams in favor of keeping the play legal.
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