Andy Reid sees injury concern on tush push, but “I’d probably do it” if effective

Chiefs head coach Andy Reid was on the wrong side of the tush push in Super Bowl LIX, but he wasn’t clamoring for it to be banned from the game on Tuesday.

Reid was a guest on PFT Live from the Scouting Combine in Indianapolis and the subject of the play came up during his visit. The Chiefs have eschewed all manners of quarterback sneaks with Patrick Mahomes in recent years after he was hurt on one early in his career, but Reid said he’d likely call the play if he could run it as well as the Eagles do.

“They do it better than anybody, so they’re gonna get criticized,” Reid said. “Heck, if we could do it effectively, I’d probably do it.”

Bills head coach Sean McDermott and others have cited safety concerns as the reason to consider banning the play. Reid said he shares some of those concerns based on what former Eagles center Jason Kelce has said about running the play.

“That’s how I feel, but these committees take care of all this injury stuff,” Reid said. “You hear Jason Kelce coming out — he said it when he was playing, he said it when he’s retired. And I got a lot of trust in that kid, he’s tougher than shoe leather. He’s out there going, ‘this is a great play, but it kills me. As a center, I was getting destroyed.’ . . . That in itself is an alarm that you gotta look at.”

Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni took issue with the idea that the play leads to an inordinate number of injuries and said he believes that data from the league will show that to be the case. That will likely factor into any move to change the officiating on one of the most effective plays in Sirianni’s playbook.