What can the "Brotherly Shove" teach us about strategic response?

Strategic response is a fancy phrase for “the situation has changed, how do you respond?”

Every one of us that has worked with or in the typical organisation has the feeling that all too often, in the face of adversity, there’s a tendency to “do what we’ve always done, but harder”. Recently we, Nick Drage and Indy Neogy , came across a live example in sports, which illustrates how even highly competitive organisations that devote significant resources to analysis can get caught in this trap.

The NFL is over 100 years old, established in 1920, with its “modern era” arguably beginning in 1967 with the first Super Bowl. Over fifty years of strategic innovation in a multi-billion dollar industry, with many teams having their own groups of analysts, along with many many outside critics.

Of interest to anyone who thinks about strategy is that this established and intensely scrutinized sport has a tactic that’s been in use for over a year, that one team has perfected, that other teams struggle to emulate, and with the best minds against them - the tactic still seems to be unstoppable.

Over a year of use, and still winning games

As shown on Monday Night Football, even in its second year of use, the “Brotherly Shove” used by the Philadelphia Eagles is still effective, and still doesn’t appear to have a counter - even from the reigning Super Bowl champions Kansas City Chiefs.

Sky Sports have details of the very recent defeat of the Chiefs by the Eagles here. As you’ll see, that article includes a shot of the Brotherly Shove technique for their go ahead touchdown in the middle of the fourth quarter. As commentator Joe Buck says “you know what the Eagles do from here” - and in a sport that usually relies heavily on deception and misdirection, it’s rare to be so transparent in what you’re doing, and win anyway.

The technique comes from Richie Gray, a rugby coach with the understanding of leverage that comes from that sport. While Rugby and American Football are similar, the detail of each sport is very different, making Rugby a useful source of alternate techniques.

The interesting bit about strategic response is that the Eagles first showed off their “Brotherly Shove” tactic in 2022, as Sports Illustrated reports.

An NFL team only has four chances to move ten yards or they lose possession of the ball, and they can only expect around eleven possessions a game. So the requirement to gain just a yard or so comes up more often than you would think, especially when the team gets to the scoring end of the field and has less space to operate in. Even with other methods being available, any tactic that gives you a higher percentage chance of success is invaluable.

Searching for an explanation

So here is something extremely effective and first seen a year and a half ago - and what have the well-paid coaches and analysts on opposing teams come up with? Surprisingly little. A number of teams barely responded, especially at first. The recent wave has been to pack more players down at the front line, but with surprisingly little attention paid to what else the Eagles are doing differently.

Which brings us to another surprising source of knowledge, in looking at how a rugby coach has helped innovate, the best analysis, and a potential counter-tactic, comes from a YouTuber. When you wouldn’t expect a solitary analyst to be more insightful than all those defensive coaches and assistants with their teams’ resources behind them.

That solitary analyst is YouTuber Brett Kollmann . In a recent video “How a Scottish Rugby Coach made the Eagles Unstoppable.” Kollman covers how the Philadelphia Eagles have used this play to almost guarantee a first down with 1 yard to go. It also covers how a number of teams have tried to copy the Eagles, and how a number of teams have tried to stop it, but game events show they’ve not managed to understand it the way he has.

With due regard to Kollman, his insights about what would be required to defend it seem fairly accessible to anyone who is familiar with Rugby Union. It’s very interesting that few teams seem to have picked up on it. This suggests that there’s something about these organisations that gets in the way of strategic response.

For example, tending to understand new phenomenon in terms of what they already know. There is a play in American Football called the “QB sneak”; this is a well known and used play in the NFL, with a typical success rate of over 80%.

For a full history of the QB sneak please refer to this excellent article on CBS sports. But that analysis points to some of the overall confusion (and lack of strategic response) across the league as the raw statistics make the “Brotherly Shove” appear only slightly more effective than a QB sneak. Classically a lot of QB sneaks are run as an option, making use of the fact that the defense has to cover other possibilities. What has made the “Shove” so interesting is that it has retained effectiveness even when everyone is expecting it.

So what are the “take aways” from this?

• That even organisations with plenty of resources devoted to analysis often either don’t “clock” a change or figure out a good response.
• There’s a skill to looking away from the existing analysis, but also avoiding those who are just willfully different, to discover those unexpected sources of new knowledge.
• It’s yet another layer of skill to not just notice that something new is happening, but put the effort in to design a response and keep iterating until you build a response that works.
• That no field exhibiting any degree of complexity is “solved”, there is always room for new and unexpected innovations. It might feel like you and your competitors have explored all the options, but there is usually a new angle to be found.
• That taking inspiration from other fields can give you those angles. We’re reminded of Mark Earls ' “Copy Copy Copy”, and the ever-loitering Contradiction Matrix from TRIZ, but an analysis of those methodologies is for a much longer piece.

If you're struggling with Strategic Response:

Nick is a strategist, and an enthusiastic proponent of game-based analysis, you can find out more about him on www.pathdependence.co.uk.

Indy is a strategic coach and consultant and you can find out more about him at www.enoptron.com.