Eagles Head Coach Nick Sirianni (Post-Game Transcript)
Q. On his interaction with fans after the game:
NICK SIRIANNI: Just excited to get the win, yeah. It’s hard to win in this league, so we’re excited to get the win. Our fans created a couple of false starts that really helped us win this football game.
But I’m just excited to get the win and I appreciate the Linc’s [Lincoln Financial Field’s] support.
Q. On balancing winning while also making mistakes:
NICK SIRIANNI: It’s damn hard to win in this league. Man, they got some really good football players over there and I know [Browns Head] Coach [Kevin] Stefanski is a hell of a football coach.
So, it’s hard to win. What we’ll do is we’ll stay hungry, we’ll stay humble, and we’ll look at the things we messed up and we’ve got to fix. Did we play like a championship-level team today? No, not by any means. We had mistakes that, first and foremost, always are going to be on me.
We’ll get those cleaned up. We’ll be hard on the guys tomorrow, you know, based off those things, and we’ll celebrate the things we did well, and we’ll be hard on the things we didn’t do well.
All that matters is that we get better from this, and so, excited about the win. I thought a lot of the guys played really good games today.
Q. On what is attributed to the slow starts to games:
NICK SIRIANNI: You know what? I mean, you guys keep talking about it and we have two — defense started fast, right?
Defense started fast. We’ll say it about the offense. The defense started fast. You know what? We [the offense] started slowly. First two series we didn’t score, but then they put their head down and went down and got points and then they did it again.
So, I don’t want that to be in their heads. We didn’t execute. We didn’t call good enough plays, and we didn’t score early on, but we scored and got up 10-nothing.
So, I think as a team we started well. We can start a little faster offensively. We’ll keep working on that and keep trying to put them in plays that they execute well, put the ball in our playmaker’s hands and let [QB] Jalen [Hurts] go to work. I thought Jalen played an unbelievable game today.
Yeah, we’ll get on track. It will turn because we are working hard at it and players are working hard at it.
Q. On his increased animation today:
NICK SIRIANNI: I was having fun. I was having fun and I kind of got some feedback from the guys of the sense of, ‘We need you back, Nick. We need your energy. We need your focus.’ I got that from a couple players.
When I’m operating, having fun, I think that that breeds to the rest of the football team. If I want the guys to celebrate and be themselves after big plays, then I should probably do that myself, right?
There are times for that and times that are not for that. I have to have wisdom and discernment of when to do that and when not to do that. I was kind of talking back and forth with 21 and 0. I think [Browns CB Greg] Newsom [II] and [Browns CB] Denzel Ward are phenomenal football players. Denzel Ward made a really good play there.
I told Jacob [Sirianni] that he’s only allowed to get jerseys of players on other teams that are just superstars. I don’t want to see him with mediocre players. He can get a Denzel Ward jersey. I’ll let him do that. That guy is a phenomenal football player.
I had played college football with a bunch of guys from Nordonia where he went to high school. I’ve just got a lot of respect for him. That’s out of fun.
[Browns S] Rodney [McLeod] is the other guy. I love Rodney. Man, Rodney means a lot to me. I think back about Rodney talking to our football team — I think I said something this week about how Rodney said something in 2021. I have so much for Rodney McLeod, so much respect and gratitude towards him. He was talking to me, I was talking back to him.
It was just all out of fun.
Q. On when he received feedback from players on his increased energy:
NICK SIRIANNI: A little bit during the bye, a little bit during the game.
Q. On the final sequence before halftime:
NICK SIRIANNI: I’ll never try to give a competitive advantage to anybody else.
I’ll say this: I made the call on third and one. Nobody else but me. You know, like I said to you, I did that on defense one time as well.
I made a call on defense. It didn’t work out just so you know. I’ll put that out there. That wasn’t on [Defensive Coordinator] Vic [Fangio]. I won’t tell you which play. I’m going to do that from time to time. This time it didn’t work. That’s on nobody else but me.
Then we’ve got to do a couple things a little bit different with how we – 95 [Browns DE Myles Garrett] is really good at blocking kicks. 95, man, holy crap. That guy is something else. Myles Garrett, I’ve never seen him — maybe in 2020. Yeah, I saw him up close and personal in 2020.
But that dude is something else. He’s as advertised. We watched him all week and we thought about him all week. I don’t think anybody thought of Myles Garrett as much as we did. We had a plan for him on an offense and then he makes a play on special teams.
Q. On if Head Coach Nick Sirianni made the kill shot call to WR A.J. Brown:
NICK SIRIANNI: Nope. Nope. That was the quarterback. That was [Offensive Coordinator] Kellen [Moore] and Jalen, and…
Q. On what went on behind the kill shot call to WR A.J. Brown:
NICK SIRIANNI: You know, it was something that they looked at. It was a good job by Jalen and A.J. talking at the line of scrimmage, figuring out what the best play to go to was. A little bit of a check there.
Good players making great plays. A.J. has got — yeah, you can ask them. If they want to tell you they can tell you. Two guys made a great – I was just telling Jacob [Sirianni], my son, that A.J. is a guy that has probably caught so many footballs in his life and so many baseballs in his life.
Jalen threw an unbelievable ball. But A.J.’s ball skills for a deep ball, I think about the pylon for a touchdown in the Super Bowl. I think about today and I think about the two today. The guy has his arm racked. I can’t imagine how many pop flies his dad threw to him when he was a little kid and how many times he actually had pop flies in baseball.
Man, he has unbelievable ball skills to make a catch because of how much he’s worked at it. He should trust his preparation because he’s caught so many balls like that.
And then Jalen has worked so hard to throw pretty deep balls. He made a perfect throw, a perfect catch. I thought [Greg] Newsom had really good coverage on the play.
Kobe Bryant used to say all the time, ‘Good offense beats good defense every day of the week.’ They had good defense on, but we had a really good offense and our playmakers made a play when we needed it most.
We had that mindset there of, ‘Hey, let’s not give this ball back. Don’t put our defense in a position where they got to stop them in two-minute.’ Kellen called a perfect game at the end of that game.
He threw it when he needed to throw it, he ran it when he needed to run it, our guys executed. They did a good job stopping the run. [Browns Defensive Coordinator] Jim Schwartz, I can’t say enough good things about Jim Schwartz. I think this city would agree that he’s a hell of a defensive coordinator.
I can’t tell you how much respect I have for him and how good of a defensive coordinator he has been for as long as he’s been.
Our guys just made a play in a four-minute scenario. We’ve lost a couple of games in four minutes where we have given the ball back to the offense. We had the mindset of, ‘Hey, we’re going to end with this ball in our hands.’ We did that because of great individual plays at the end of the day by Jalen and A.J.
Q. On the crowd noise:
NICK SIRIANNI: We’ve done a great job in redzone defense. Our guys work hard at it. So, I actually put my head down on third and 8. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I put my head down on plays. Sometimes I can watch them; sometimes I can’t watch them. I’m not superstitious, so it’s nothing to do with that.
But, third and 8, I put my head down so I don’t know what happened there.
Again, we got them behind the sticks. I’d really say the crowd was critical there because they had a false start and then they had a false start again. The crowd noise was critical right there of just the — it was so loud there, and it caused them some penalties. We got them behind the sticks and played good redzone defense. I thought [LB] Nolan Smith made a hell of a play.
I’ve seen [Browns QB] Deshaun Watson be Superman before. He had some plays today that I’m like, ‘Oh, man, that looked like Deshaun Watson,’ and he makes a play where they run a zone read and Nolan levels it out and makes the play, and then I think it was [CB] Coop [Cooper DeJean] that cleaned it up.
So that was a huge, huge, huge play on second and four. I think it was Coop on the play before that came across and made a play where they had an RPR there.
So, again, Vic did a good job. I can’t tell you how excited I am that Vic Fangio is our defensive coordinator. He called a good game. At the end of the day, how many points did they score on offense? Nine. I mean, Vic did an unbelievable job, and we made some plays.
Q. On the crowd being loud towards the Eagles:
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, we thrive off the crowd when they cheer for us. That’s all I’ll say. When our crowd cheers for us, we thrive off of them. You know, we hear them when they boo. We don’t necessarily like it. I don’t think that’s productive for anybody.
When they cheer for us and we’ve got them rolling, we love it.
Q. On how slow starts are being addressed and how players are concerned about them:
NICK SIRIANNI: We’re going to figure it out. We’re going to fix it. We’ve known how to score in the past. You guys have a job to do and you’re going to fixate on one thing and say, ‘Oh, they haven’t started fast and turned the ball over.’
We’ve got it. We’re going to do everything we can do to fix it. I don’t want that to be in their heads. That’s why I’m basically telling you guys that we got it. We’ll figure it out. Sometimes you get things in your head, and you continue to — and it kind of works there.
The defense started their ass off. The defense started their ass off. It was 10-nothing to start the football game off and the defense didn’t let up a play. So, they played their ass off. They started fast, right?
We’ll get it figured out on offense. We’ll get it figured out on offense.
Q. On why he brought his kids to the press conference today:
NICK SIRIANNI: I have so many memories of being on the practice field. I love football. I love football so much. Like I just told the guys this, the way I try to — my vision for the football team, our accountability, teamwork, toughness, our detail. It’s how I’m trying to raise my family. I love this game so much.
It teaches people so many different things. This is the greatest team sport there is.
So, I have so many — my mom and dad are at every single game. I mean, every single home game they drive the six hours to be here. This game is why me and my brothers — I’m going to get emotional — this game is why my brothers and I are so close and my dad and I are so close and my mom is a football mom. Like this game means so much to me.
Why do I have them here? I have so many visions of why I love this game, being at Southwestern High School when I was these guys’ age, whether I’m at practice or the ball boy on the side, and my memories of them.
A.J. came to one of [my son’s] baseball games. These guys are going to love A.J. for life. Jalen gave him a jersey last year that he has in his room.
But it’s so important that they fall in love with this game the way that I fell in love with this game, and so that’s why they’re up here. Like I can’t bring them — they have school when we’re at practice. It’s not like high school football.
These are the moments. Like we’re going to go on the field after this and play catch together. These are the moments they’re going to remember, football games. So, I really appreciate you asking this question. That’s why I bring them up here, so they can get a taste of what I used to get when I was little — and Mike Sirianni and Jay Sirianni used to get when my dad was a high school football coach growing up.
Q. On how Head Coach Nick Sirianni feels about the offense’s performance
NICK SIRIANNI: I think we did some really good things. We have to find a way to sustain drives and get some explosives here and there. I think we got some explosives. I don’t know exactly the number, but it felt like some drives were going long early. I thought Jalen operated at a very high level. He played a really solid game.
I thought a lot of the guys did. [TE] Grant Calcaterra; what can I say about him? Steps in and makes some unbelievable plays — that’s a team. It takes everybody. It takes every single body on this team to win a football game in the NFL. I think that we showed that today.