Eagles Head Coach Nick Sirianni (Post-Game Transcript)
What’d you think of your fourth down defense?
Nick Sirianni: Awesome. Those are turnovers in our mind, and really, really good coverage and rush together. Aggressive play, the front, good matching in the secondary. It’s a good football team and to be able to go, what was it? 0-5? Able to be 5-5 the way we look at it. Outstanding. Outstanding.
Does that influence the way you make some of your decisions? In particular, the fourth-and-one tush push, when you know that you’ve got the defense playing pretty well.
Nick Sirianni: The defense played awesome. I’ve got a ton of confidence in our guys to go out and execute. Obviously, I’m going to be second guessing myself about the fourth-and-one in our own territory there, but awesome job by the defense holding them to three there. We got about half of it the play before. I thought we could get the other half right there. We didn’t. I have to live with that when we don’t execute on fourth down.
Again, I have a ton of confidence in our guys to be able to do so. If you don’t have the confidence, I don’t care what numbers say, you don’t go for it there. But I had a lot of confidence and it didn’t work. Anytime it doesn’t work in a fourth down situation, I’m always going to be hypercritical of myself because it’s on me to make that decision and I’ll go back and look at it and ‘Hey, it didn’t work’. Obviously, when I’m sitting here right now, I’m like, ‘Well, I should have punted it there.’ If it works, you’re able to either drain their timeouts there or take another two minutes off the clock. But in that case, it didn’t work and I gave them a short field right there, so that’s one hundred percent on me.
What’d you think of CB Adoree’ Jackson’s play and how he’s approached that spot throughout the season?
Nick Sirianni: Was it a fourth down or a third down where he had the big stop? Third down? And then they punted after that. Huge play there. Felt like he was sticky in coverage this evening. Obviously, I love when guys have the mental toughness to, when they give up a play, to come back and continue to fight. That just speaks a lot [to] the character of the person and the character of the team.
Obviously, [Lions WR] Jameson Williams is a phenomenal football player, explosive. They’ve got a lot of good players over there, a lot of good players. He makes that play and then goes for a touchdown, and then I felt like Adoree’ really had a good game after that to be able to put it in the past and execute when we needed him the most.
The defensive front as a whole, OLB Jaelan Phillips, your second game with him. It seems like everything has kind of clicked together. DT Jordan Davis with the batted balls, the pass rush as a whole, just that group. Did that set the tone for this game?
Nick Sirianni: I think so. I think so. We were able to get some early pressure on him and get some hits on him. Those are always going to affect quarterbacks, so we did a really good job there as a defensive front. I think that’s three games in a row where it’s been humming up front. We like to play that way, being led by our offense and defensive line. Those bat downs were really, really impressive, but not surprising to us because that’s what practice looked like and has been looking like. Practice is a great indicator of what the game’s going to look like and our defense. Speaking of the bat downs, the bat downs, the crushing of blocks. We just did a really nice job there tonight.
From an offensive perspective, how demoralizing can it be when balls get batted down like that?
Nick Sirianni: Very, because you could have the right play called, everything could go right, and then it gets knocked down before you get into the execution of it. I think that’s a really good observation, and it is, it’s a little demoralizing when that happens because everything can go right and the guy gets his hands– doesn’t get free on a rush, but times it up and knocks it down.
Before I came here, being in the AFC South with [former NFL DE] JJ Watt, he had a knack for that. He had a knack for that and it was always demoralizing when he got it and I remember him always doing this when he would get it and just had a ton of respect for him. It always was like, ‘Man, we had a play there and it didn’t happen.’ The play stopped before it even got going. So, it can be super demoralizing, but an awesome job by our guys.
[Senior Defensive Assistant/Defensive Line Coach] Clint Hurtt, he’s a great coach. Helping those guys be able to do that, and then all the credit goes to those guys that are able to get their hands on those. I think we look at PBUs sometimes and we put that in the stat. Q [CB Quinyon Mitchell] had a couple nice ones tonight. Adoree’ had the nice one, but when those defensive linemen are able to get it, it’s pretty cool.
That was the only team on your schedule that voted not to ban the tush push. Do you have respect for them for not voting to ban it?
Nick Sirianni: Yeah, respect. I mean, they did a good job tonight. They did a good job tonight. Obviously, they had a good plan. They went and tried to find a way to stop it and they did a good job stopping it tonight. We had a couple that were good with the one in the red zone, but they did a good job on that tonight. Respect to them and credit to them on that.
To kind of follow up on that, you guys have said for years now you want to be aggressive in those situations on fourth-and-short, and obviously you have the tush push. When does that philosophy run into context where, you know, T Lane Johnson’s not in the game. It hasn’t been automatic tonight, and how does that factor into your decision making, just generally?
Nick Sirianni: Always. You always think about those things. Again, if we would’ve gotten pushed back, I’m assuming you’re speaking of the fourth down one that we didn’t get. If we would’ve gotten pushed back there and not moved the ball forward, because it was a full one, I felt like we moved it to about half a one. Then, just didn’t get enough on that next one. Again, you’ve got to give them a lot of credit right there, but you think about how it plays in-game, but you also think about your past experiences. Everything’s taken into account, but you definitely think about how it’s playing in-game. We had the one false start and so you had the one in the red zone. We had the false start early, what they called, and then we had the one in the red zone that we got great push, and then we got about half of it on the fourth down one. Then we just weren’t successful on the other one.
Again, anytime we don’t get a fourth down conversion, I’m always going to put that on myself. I’m always going to be hypercritical of myself, and obviously, had I known we wouldn’t get it, I would’ve punted it, but obviously the game’s not played that way. Have a ton of confidence in it, but we will go back and see what happened and why it happened.
Did you get an explanation on why it was a false start on G/T Tyler Steen instead of a neutral zone infraction?
Nick Sirianni: Yeah, I thought that the guy got himself into the neutral zone off of a hard count, and I guess he was lined up there initially, which would’ve ended up being a penalty had we snapped it and we ended up having to punt on fourth-and-sixth. In that scenario, I’m not sure I prepared Tyler the best I could possibly prepare him for that. Again, I thought that he jumped in there, but he was apparently lined up in there and if he’s lined up in there and then you reach out and touch him, which anytime there’s an offsides, we teach our guys to reach out and touch.
We had one last week, if you remember, but he didn’t get into the neutral zone and we ended up getting a penalty on it. We’re hyperaggressive with that to try to get the free five yards, but again, I don’t think I prepared Tyler well enough, or Tyler may not have seen him in the neutral zone to begin with. I don’t ever recall going over that rule with him that if he’s in the neutral zone and then you react, then that’s a false start on us. I don’t think I did a good enough job preparing him in that scenario.
What are you seeing offensively? It seems like you guys are able to gut out wins, but where do you think the offense is at this point?
Nick Sirianni: Yeah, we want to be better than what we were tonight, but every game’s played a little bit differently. The way the game is played sometimes is dictated [by] what’s happening in the game. Make no mistake about it, our goal in every single game is to come out with a win, period. Sometimes, the game’s played a little bit differently in that, and we were able to get a 10 point lead. Every game is played to win, but do we have to clean up things on offense? Of course we do. As good as the defense played, we’re going to have to clean up things on defense. As good as the special teams played, we’re going to have to clean up things on special teams. But on offense, there’s some shooting ourselves in the foot that’s happening and some of those things are things that, we always talk about [things that] take no talent, and we have such good talent that we have to be able to master the things that take no talent so our talent can shine.
Over the years, you’ve described these types of wins as gritty, ugly sometimes. Is it a style that you like and is it the style that best fits the–
Nick Sirianni: I’d like to win every game by 30 points. I don’t think that’s the reality of the NFL. I think we take a lot of pride in just winning, period. That’s all this thing’s about, right? I’ve been on the other side where you lose and you’re sick about it, right? That doesn’t mean that you don’t go to work like a madman the next day and try to fix everything that made it not a big two-score win or three-score win. I think the answer really is [that] we take pride in winning. I think our guys have this knack of knowing. As I watched football today, I feel like I saw a lot of teams waiting to lose. Our team’s waiting to win because they know how to win. There’s something to be said for knowing how to win and knowing how to figure out ways to win.
Do we want things to be better? Yeah, of course. You’re in a constant quest of getting better and we’re going to be, like I said, crazy tomorrow about the things that– we are working tomorrow. I don’t care what time the game [ended] or whatever it is, we’re working tomorrow to get better and that will be our mission. You sense it in those moments from the coaches and from the players and from myself. We know how to win and we’re going to figure out a way to win the game.
On those last two defensive drives, LB Nakobe Dean had the sack on the blitz and then the two plays where he mirrored Lions RB Jahmyr Gibbs and WR Jameson Williams, and he held up pretty well. What did those moments say about Nakobe?
Nick Sirianni: Yeah, he’s a ball player. I remember just watching guys play when I was a young kid watching Southwestern Trojans play football, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard my dad or someone say, ‘Hey, he’s just a good football player. He is just a good football player.’ I mean, I think of a lot of guys. One guy that keeps coming to my mind right now as I’m talking is [former high school teammate] Pete Conley. Just a good football player.
Nakobe’s just a good football player. He prepares his ass off. You can see how much the guys love him out on that field. We’ve got three really good linebackers, and really, I love our entire linebacker group. But just a good football player because I can’t tell you how much respect, I mean you saw Gibbs out there today. A guy is an explosive playmaker. He’s electric. He’s one of the best backs in the NFL. I’ll take [RB] Saquon [Barkley] over anybody, but I’m not sure that there’s anybody else above him from what I saw in person there today. In ’22, he wasn’t there. I think ’23 was his first year. Yeah, he’s electric. He’s electric. I’ve got a lot of respect for him.
WR A.J. Brown had 11 targets tonight. Was that just how the game kind of expressed itself or was it something you guys did to get him more involved in that?
Nick Sirianni: We’re always trying to get A.J. involved. Always, always, always, always. The game play is played differently each and every week of what happens. I don’t think I’ve been shy about saying this. The game plan’s always going to start in the passing game with him and [WR] DeVonta [Smith] and [TE] Dallas [Goedert], and so we’re always trying to do that and get him the football. That’s the way the game played out a little bit today.