Jalen Hurts is good as a short-yardage runner, but he’s no Daniel Jones or Brock Purdy. And he’s not quite up there with Sam Darnold and Jameis Winston. Or so it seems.
I’ve got the short-yardage rushing numbers in front of me. The tabulated totals for all plays where teams need either 1 yard to score a touchdown, or needed 1 yard to move the sticks on third or fourth down.
The numbers aren’t quite what you would expect.
Hurts carried the ball a league-high 39 times on such plays, and while it seemed like he got what he needed on almost all of those plays, he actually got stopped 9 times, for a success rate slightly below 80 percent.
There were 39 other players who carried the ball on at least 10 of those plays last year, and a third of them, remarkably, finished with higher conversion rates.
Of those 13 that finished 80 percent or higher, only four were running backs – Roschon Johnson, Braelon Allen, Kyren Williams and Tyrone Tracy.
This is not, of course, an apples-to-apples situation. With Hurts, many of those plays involved the Eagles coming to the line of scrimmage and muscling out what they needed, with the opponent unable to stop the Tush Push. With some of these other quarterbacks, the defense had no idea a quarterback sneak was coming. And the chart below also includes stats from pass plays that turned into scrambles.
Nonetheless, the numbers are a little surprising.
And note, by the way, that the 40th player on the list – the worst of the short-yardage runners – was none other than Saquon Barkley (converting only 3 of 11 carries when the Eagles were looking for a big yard).
I expect we’ll be seeing plenty more of the Tush Push.
| "AND ONE" RUSHING | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Player | "Good" | Att | Pct |
| QB Daniel Jones, NYG | 11 | 12 | .917 |
| QB Brock Purdy, S.F. | 11 | 12 | .917 |
| Roschon Johnson, Chi. | 11 | 12 | .917 |
| Braelon Allen, NYJ | 11 | 12 | .917 |
| QB Justin Herbert, LAC | 10 | 11 | .909 |
| QB Sam Darnold, Min. | 10 | 11 | .909 |
| QB Jameis Winston, Cle. | 9 | 10 | .900 |
| QB Josh Allen, Buff. | 22 | 25 | .880 |
| QB Bo Nix, Den. | 13 | 15 | .867 |
| Kyren Williams, LAR | 19 | 23 | .826 |
| QB Jayden Daniels, Was. | 13 | 16 | .813 |
| QB Will Levis, Ten. | 8 | 10 | .800 |
| Tyrone Tracy, NYG | 8 | 10 | .800 |
| QB Jalen Hurts, Phil. | 30 | 39 | .769 |
| Jahmyr Gibbs, Det. | 10 | 13 | .769 |
| Bijan Robinson, Atl. | 16 | 21 | .762 |
| Derrick Henry, Balt. | 16 | 21 | .762 |
| Kareem Hunt, K.C. | 15 | 20 | .750 |
| Rachaad White, T.B. | 9 | 12 | .750 |
| Joe Mixon, Hou. | 11 | 15 | .733 |
| Zach Charbonnet, Sea. | 10 | 14 | .714 |
| J.K. Dobbins, LAC | 7 | 10 | .700 |
| Najee Harris, Pitt. | 7 | 10 | .700 |
| Jonathan Taylor, Ind. | 17 | 25 | .680 |
| Chuba Hubbard, Car. | 14 | 21 | .667 |
| Chase Brown, Cin. | 10 | 15 | .667 |
| Josh Jacobs, G.B. | 12 | 19 | .632 |
| Tyler Allgeier, Atl. | 10 | 16 | .625 |
| Tank Bigsby, Jac. | 10 | 16 | .625 |
| Brian Robinson, Was. | 13 | 21 | .619 |
| James Conner, Ari. | 11 | 18 | .611 |
| David Montgomery, Det. | 12 | 20 | .600 |
| Kenneth Walker, Sea. | 7 | 12 | .583 |
| Hassan Haskins, LAC | 7 | 13 | .538 |
| Rhamondre Stevenson, N.E. | 7 | 13 | .538 |
| Alvin Kamara, N.O. | 5 | 11 | .455 |
| Breece Hall, NYJ | 5 | 11 | .455 |
| DeVon Achane, Mia. | 4 | 11 | .364 |
| Aaron Jones, Min. | 5 | 14 | .357 |
| Saquon Barkley, Phil. | 3 | 11 | .273 |
—Ian Allan