Nick Sirianni

Q. In the self-scouting process, what did you learn about the team? (Zach Berman)

NICK SIRIANNI: That’s not information that we’ll give out because obviously we’ll use a lot of that this week and weeks coming.

But we worked hard. It’s a huge important part of the process, which obviously we benefitted from last year, as well. There are a lot of manhours. Really appreciate our quality control coaches, [Assistant Quarterbacks/Offensive Assistant coach] Alex Tanney, with what he did, [Offensive Quality Control coach] T.J. Paganetti, [Offensive Quality Control coach] Eric Dickerson, [Assistant Offensive Line coach] Roy [Istvan], the defensive guys, and then the special teams, [Special Teams Quality Control coach] Tyler Brown, [Defensive Quality Control] Joe Kasper, [Assistant Defensive Backs coach] D.K. [McDonald], they worked really, really hard because they had to put a lot of manhours into that to get that ready for the rest of the coaches to look at on Monday after the players leave and then Tuesday and Wednesday.

So, they did a lot of manhours. Our analytics department did a lot of manhours. A lot of people put in a lot of time to get that information to us, and then we spent a lot of time on it.

So we grinded, and we’ll be better because of it.

Q. Did you give them Friday off? (Bo Wulf)

NICK SIRIANNI: They had Friday off.

Q. How much time did you spend watching the Phillies? (Ed Kracz)

NICK SIRIANNI: I did. I watched the game. The fan of the baseball team that I grew up liking, I’ll keep that to myself. I can’t say that I’ve watched a baseball game in a long time in the sense of just sat there and watched a baseball game because that team that I liked, they don’t have many successful postseason attempts.

It’s fun. I’m glad to say now I’m a Phillies fan. That Saturday night game was fun. That was fun. I didn’t watch any college football that night. That’s what I watched, the Phillies game. A lot of fun to watch. That’s a fun team.

Man, I just look at that team and I think about the way they connect with each other, because you want to emulate good teams and you want to see what makes good teams good teams. They connect with each other. They’re always celebrating together. It’s fun to watch. All those different things, they went through adversity throughout the year and came out better because of it. My hat’s off to their coaches and to their players for having the dawg mentality to go and control what you can control.

It’s been a lot of fun watching it. I got home yesterday, and my son was sleeping. One of my sons was sleeping, and he was wearing his [Philadelphia Phillies Bryce] Harper jersey. I think that’s really cool. Really excited.

We’re busy this week to get ready for our stuff, but Friday and Saturday, we’ll have a little time to watch it. Next week, we won’t have as much time to watch anything, just being on a short week, but I look forward to watching the games I can watch and continuing to root them on.

Q. Is any of that going to creep into your messaging to your team? (Dave Zangaro)

NICK SIRIANNI: We have our own current messaging going on. I don’t know exactly what they’re saying as their message, but I think it’s fun for all of us to watch it. But yeah, of course. At some point I’ll probably use a dawg mentality thing with what they went through in the season, so at some point, yeah, the connecting. I know we used a connecting clip last year in one of the team meetings of the ’93 Phillies. I remember some of the clips we showed, how much they enjoyed being around each other. So yeah, I imagine that we will at some point.

I know there were some situational things that were in question from the [San Diego] Padres that I’ve heard a little bit about. Situations are situations. Now, do we have the same — do we have to decide if we’re going to bunt or not in a certain situation? No. But handling situations is handling situations.

So maybe that’s going to be in our Saturday situational meeting this week. We’ll see.

Q. Is T Lane Johnson out of the concussion protocol? (Tim McManus)

NICK SIRIANNI: He’s still in the protocol. We’ll see how it goes.

Q. Anything else lingering from Dallas? (Tim McManus)

NICK SIRIANNI: No, we’re hopeful everybody can play. We’ll get you that injury report later today, but we’re hopeful.

Q. As far as the self-scout, because last year your bye was a lot later in the season, this year you didn’t have the larger sample size. Can you rely on it as much? (John McMullen)

NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, I think you can. Six games is a good sample size. I was looking at a couple things, and I saw that the 2016 Eagles had the bye week on the fourth week. I’m like, oh, my goodness. So six weeks, I think there’s a lot of information out there, especially when you’re talking about what you want to do better, different things like that, the tells that you have, all these different things. There’s a lot of information out there that, like I said, we were able to use. I thought the sample size was good.

Q. In terms of the trade deadline, Executive Vice President/General Manager Howie Roseman has been very active in years prior. Where does your voice factor into that, especially as it relates to bringing in a new person into what is already a tight and successful locker room? (Jeff McLane)

NICK SIRIANNI: Sure, we talk about everything. We’ll talk through everything on every situation. That’s what’s special about this building. That’s what’s great about [Executive Vice President/General Manager] Howie [Roseman]. We talk through everything. That’s schedules, that’s everything. That’s stuff on the football end and stuff on the front office end. We’ll talk through everything, watch things together.

I’m in meetings most of the time, but we find time together to watch things together and go through it.

Q. How important is that to you that the person who is brought in can fit in? (Jeff McLane)

NICK SIRIANNI: I think that’s always important. You look at everything. We know we have a good culture. We have good teammates. We have good players on this team. You want whoever you bring in to be able to fit in.

Now, one thing I do know about this team, and I’ve seen it over and over and over again is the leaders on this team, the guys on this team have embraced the new players. We saw it with [K] Cam [Dicker]. They put their arms around Cam as soon as he got here. He ends up making a big kick. [S] Chauncey [Gardner-Johnson] didn’t go through where we did a lot of our growth together with connecting and everything like that in the training camp and the off-season, but it was the same thing. Same thing with [CB] James [Bradberry]. James wasn’t here in the off-season, he was here in training camp.

So, we’ve seen it on a guy coming in — like [LB] Haason [Reddick] was here all off-season. Everyone welcomes him. Then James doesn’t get here until training camp. It’s the same thing that everyone welcomed him and made him feel a part of the team. Then Chauncey comes after training camp, and then Cam comes in after.

The trend of what I see on this team from our leaders and our guys on this team is that a lot of guys can fit into this team because of the leaders that we have.

Q. What did you think of Pittsburgh Steelers QB Kenny Pickett when he was coming out of Pitt, and what do you think of the way he’s developing? (Merrill Reese)

NICK SIRIANNI: I was a big Kenny Pickett fan. I thought he was a really good football player. He did a lot of really good things. He had one of the best seasons since a guy named [Dan] Marino over there, which is darn impressive. I thought he was an accurate passer. I thought he was a quick decision maker. I thought he was a very good, underrated guy with his legs. He had one of the coolest plays that anyone has ever seen in that ACC Championship game when he pretended to slide, the guy stopped and then he went for a touchdown, so much so that they made a rule about it.

I thought also he’s very intelligent. As far as football intelligence, he was off the charts. I thought he was really good.

Then getting into how he’s playing and everything, you’re just going to keep seeing him get better. I just think from everything I know about him, I think he’ll continue to get better because I think he has a lot of tools.

Q. We see how the break would help veteran guys, some of the older players, but how do you think it helps someone like QB Jalen Hurts? What can he get out of it? (Martin Frank)

NICK SIRIANNI: I mean, shoot, the same thing. Jalen is a coach, right, on the field. He’s a quarterback who grew up in coaches’ meetings and everything like that. He’s going to study it very similar. The quarterbacks are going to study it very similar to the way the coaches are and look at those things that we have tendencies and all those different things and get better from that.

Obviously, we sent Jalen a packet of what we did, a book of what we did, and gave him summary notes of it, as well, so he could study it, and we were talking through it as we would with all the other coaches.

Q. You mentioned the role of the analytics department in self-scouting. How has your relationship with them grown? (Bo Wulf)

NICK SIRIANNI: Awesome. I can’t say enough good things about them, to have that extra information that you get. This analytics department is unbelievable, you get information that you add to your studies and everything like that to help put pieces together, and they’ve been awesome. I can’t say enough good things about all the guys and girls that work in that department and how much they’ve helped us for the two years I’ve been here.