Eagles Head Coach Nick Sirianni (Post-Game Transcript)
Q. Fourth and two at the 33-yard line, down 15, two and a half left, what were you… (Jeff McLane)
NICK SIRIANNI: In the third quarter? Yeah, to me there was a lot of football left to play in the third and fourth quarter. So I don’t regret that decision. To me, with that much time where that ball is right there, yeah, I did what I felt like I needed to do in that particular time.
Q. Big picture, what are your takeaways? (Tim McManus)
NICK SIRIANNI: We didn’t coach good enough, didn’t play good enough. Simple as that. And why do you not do that? Well, you have to give credit to them, too. That’s a really good football team. If you don’t come out and play your best game against the guys that they have and the coaches that they have, it’s going to look like that.
So, we have to coach better. Have to play better. We have a lot to clean up.
Q. Was QB Jalen Hurts’ health a factor in the fourth down decision? He got hurt on the play before that. (Zach Berman)
NICK SIRIANNI: No.
Q. Did they do anything differently schematically after the first quarter when you got shut down three and out? (Chris Murray)
NICK SIRIANNI: I mean, yeah, obviously they started running the ball a little bit better. That was six plays, so it’s hard to say that they made a complete schematic change after six plays — because they went three and out, three and out.
Our defense did a nice job. To say that you know exactly what their game plan is after four first and second down calls and two third down calls, I can’t answer that question, you know what I’m saying? It’s just too small of a sample size to say they did something completely different.
They started moving the ball and being able to run in play-action. And, again, hats off to them. They have a lot of good players and coaches.
Q. You haven’t often been in a position where you’re down this big late in the fourth quarter. What’s the benefit of keeping the starters in? (Jimmy Kempski)
NICK SIRIANNI: We were still down two possessions. There was some time. We had our timeouts still. Just trying to continue the game.
Q. I think you were down 23. (Jimmy Kempski)
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, we’re going to fight to the end.
Q. You’re down at linebacker. They clearly went at the linebackers. Why weren’t they able to perform and even just make tackles in space? (Jeff McLane)
NICK SIRIANNI: Again, hats off to them. That’s a tough team to tackle. We take pride in our tackling. I think we’ve been pretty good this year. We’re in the top 10 as far as missed tackle rate.
But we didn’t do a good enough job today. Again, that’s us putting the guys in positions to be able to tackle and then also doing it. A little bit uncharacteristic day on our part as far as the tackling.
You saw that lead to some big plays, and part of that is, too, they broke tackles. So they played really well and we didn’t play well enough and they coached really well and we didn’t coach well enough.
At the end of the day that’s what it is. It was a little uncharacteristic the missed tackles, but [Niners WR] Deebo [Samuel] and [Niners RB Christian] McCaffrey and [Niners TE George] Kittle, those guys do a good job and [Niners WR Brandon] Aiyuk, they do a good job of breaking tackles as well.
Q. Did you see a difference in QB Jalen Hurts when he came back in? (Mike Sielski)
NICK SIRIANNI: I thought he was fine when he came back in and was running the show and operating fine. Went down, drove, got a touchdown. Then we just stalled out on the next drive.
They’re playing soft or giving us the stuff underneath, but I thought he operated fine when he came back in. Obviously, we’ll see how he’s feeling and everything.
Q. What did you see beforehand? (Mike Sielski)
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, again, have to watch the tape, but started off good as an entire offense, and we just — in the red zone, had some red zone woes right there that we’ve done a much better job of.
Then it’s just today they stopped us in the red zone; kind of got behind the sticks in on one of them and got into a third and really long on one.
I’ll have to watch the tape and see what happened there exactly, but that was tough on us to start the game fast and only be up 6-0. Hats off to them. They did a good job in the red zone, and, again, we didn’t coach it well enough or execute it well enough.
Q. Did you stop yourself in the red zone or did they stop you? (Howard Eskin)
NICK SIRIANNI: Again, credit to them. That’s a good football team. We’re always going to want to play better when something like this happens and coach better.
But they did a good job. They have good players and they had a good scheme and they stopped us.
Q. On the sideline sequence when Senior Advisor to the General Manager/Chief Security Officer Dom DiSandro was sent off, what was your reaction to that? (Zach Berman)
NICK SIRIANNI: Just knowing we had to move on and play the next play. So that’s all we were trying to do in that scenario, is move on, get the ball down inside the 12-yard line or something after the personal foul, and just regroup and get everybody going and play the next play.
Just like we do when we have a bad play, a good play, bad game, good game, we’re going to have to pick ourselves up off the mat going into this week as well.
Q. We heard from players walking into the locker room and in the locker that ‘we’ll see them again’. This is the greatest disparity loss that you had in two years. Is that representative of the difference between the two teams or is this just a one week thing where they just had… (Jeff McLane)
NICK SIRIANNI: They got after us good today. Again, a lot of credit to them. They’re a really good football team. We didn’t play our best game. They’re really good. You can’t play that way and coach that way against a really good team.
We’re going to take this one day at a time. I heard a lot of guys back and forth talking about playing them again, and it’s probably going to happen again. But there is so much football to be played between now and then. There are so many other good teams also.
So that can’t be in our thought process. What’s going to have to happen tomorrow is we’re going to have to get the corrections of what we made mistakes on and then go through our process. Anybody we play in the NFC, we’re going to make sure we go through our process to say what happened, and then kind of our game evaluation if we play them again, here are the things we need to do better; here are the things we may not have expected that they did; here are some things they did well that you can anticipate repeating.
We’re going to go through that process, and if it happens, it happens, but we’re focused on the next game.
Again, hats off to them.
Q. You’re always kind of hyper-focused on one week at a time. There was a report about your messaging to the team from Jay Glazer about take it personally the way they talk. In hindsight, do you think that was the way to go? (John McMullen)
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, I’m fine with that. Really, what it was is kind of what I say to you guys all the time as far as, hey, there were some things said after last game. If you want to use that as motivation, use it. If it distracts you, then don’t.
But make no mistake about it, the biggest motivation you always have is to play for each other. I’m not going to second guess — I’ll second guess everything that — I’ll rethink through everything that I do or don’t do, but as far as the messaging goes right there, shoot, yeah, again, that’s what we’re going to do with a lot of things.
If it helps you, it helps you; if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. But play for each other. With all that, try to play under control. Again, there have been times we’ve used some stuff like that that it’s been good for us; today it wasn’t.
Again, that is a really good football team and well coached.
Q. With Jalen Hurts going out, was that part of the reason not to go for it on fourth and two? (Brooks Kubena)
Q. What was the discussion about that? Also, how do you see your play calling change when the defense is not as successful as the past couple weeks? (Brooks Kubena)
NICK SIRIANNI: As far as right there, again, with where the ball was, I thought there was a lot of football left to be played to be able to punt it back to them. You take everything into account.
It was just the decision I made right there, and sometimes my decisions in those areas are going to work; sometimes they’re not.
This particular one it didn’t work.
Q. You played a lot of snaps last week, particularly on defense. Do you think fatigue was an issue in this game? (Jimmy Kempski)
NICK SIRIANNI: No, no. Again, everyone at this time of year is going to be tired and all those different things. We won’t use that as an excuse. I know we played a lot of snaps, but again, didn’t coach well enough and didn’t play well enough today.