Eagles Head Coach Nick Sirianni (Post-Game Transcript)

I know you told us during the week that you weren’t considering changing play callers, but now that you have 10 days between this game and the next one, is that something you’ll evaluate with that time?

Nick Sirianni: We’ll evaluate everything, but like I said to you guys, when you win, when you lose, it’s never about one person. We all collectively have to do a better job and that’s going to be starting with us as coaches, starting with me as head coach, finding solutions to get the offense going, and so I’ll put that on us as a staff and put that on me most individually there to help get this thing pointed in the right direction.

 

But I still stay with that. It’s the greatest team sport there is and it’s never about one person. We all have to look internally, and all have to get better, coaches and players.

 

On the offense though, you return 10 of 11 starters, you guys spend more money on that unit than any other team in the NFL. Why is it not performing?

Nick Sirianni: I wish I could tell you this is exactly what it is, and this is hard. It’s not easy to be successful, stay successful, so we have to, again, do it collectively. We have to do it collectively as a unit. Obviously, if I knew exactly what it was and everything that it was, then we’d have fixed it. But right now, we’re still searching and we’re still looking, and [there’s] a lot of football left to play. 8-4 right now. A lot of football left to play. This weekend will be an opportunity for us to find more answers and to figure things out as coaches, players being able to rest to gear up for this last stretch of five games. Obviously, it hasn’t been good enough, coaching, playing, and we’ve got to find answers.

 

I know you haven’t had a chance to watch the tape yet, but from your initial reaction to the game, are there some common themes that you feel really hurt you guys tonight?

Nick Sirianni: I felt like just the entire– it was both units, offense, defense, hats off to them. They played a good game; they coached a good game. They outcoached us; they outplayed us. That’s obviously something that I need to go through and watch, look through it, but to say I don’t want to– again, they ran for however many yards. We didn’t run for many yards. We lost the turnover battle. We lost the explosive play battle. All those things are going to dictate the win and loss.

 

Typically, you pride yourself on having a very physical team. They ran for 281 today. What is the disconnect that you think happened there?

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, again, have to look at it. They did a really good job of how they attacked and executing it. Hats off to them, but obviously we’ve won a lot of football games being on the other end of that. We’ve just got to get back to playing and coaching Eagles football.

 

Can you take us through the end of the first half there? You let like 30 seconds or so run off the clock to the two-minute warning. Normally we see you pushing–

Nick Sirianni: We were still pushing for points. We were still pushing for points. We had three timeouts, ball at the 30 whatever, 38. We had plenty of time to go and score a touchdown and be the last ones with the football, so we got the one yard on the completion with 2:37. Then took it to the two-minute warning and we were going on the ball after that.

 

It seems uncharacteristic of you.

Nick Sirianni: No, no. We would play that. That was pretty– that’s normal to how we would play that with the end of a half, but we were still– again, when we got back to getting it off of second down on the two-minute warning, we would’ve been on the ball there and gone.

 

If I could ask you just to clarify what you said earlier about evaluating everything, so does that mean you are evaluating changing the play caller?

Nick Sirianni: No, we’re not changing the play caller, but we will evaluate everything. This weekend, we’ll have another little mini-bye. Another short week that leads to a long weekend where we’ll evaluate everything. But again, like I said after that, it’s never just about one person. You win as a team, you lose as a team, and you try to evaluate everything, win, lose or draw and get better from it.

 

What’s Offensive Coordinator Kevin Patullo doing to give you that confidence?

Nick Sirianni: I have confidence in the entire group. I know it will keep coming back to Kevin, but again, if I thought it was one thing, then you make those changes. Obviously, it’s a lot of different things, but I don’t think it is Kevin. Now, we all have a part in it. Kevin has a part of it. I have a part of it. All the coaches have a part of it. All the players have a part of it. Again, you win and lose as a team. It’s never on one thing.

 

RB Saquon Barkley had 13 carries. 34 passes for QB Jalen Hurts on the windy night. Is that just a game flow thing?

Nick Sirianni: Yes and then also how the game goes at the end where you’re trying to get back in the game. We obviously had a lot of throws there at the end. I thought early on, we had some good runs. We didn’t have a ton of plays in the first half, but early on we had some good runs. I think you can chalk that up. Again, you know we want to be balanced with how we attack, but we’ll do whatever we need to do to try to win each and every game. Obviously, we didn’t tonight, but I think a little bit of that was some of the two-minute stuff that we had there at the end of the game.

 

Is there a plan to get into RB Tank Bigsby at some point? He obviously had that one really big game, and he has not seen the field as much.

Nick Sirianni: He’s still always going to be the guy that comes in for Saquon, and like I said, we want to get Saquon more than 13 carries also, but we have a lot of confidence in him when he goes into the football game to make plays. We’ll continue to roll the way we are rolling with it. But yeah, when he goes in, he’s had some really good plays. We’ll continue to roll. We want to make sure we get Saquon the football. We know how explosive he can be when he has the football.

 

The biggest issues with the run defense?

Nick Sirianni: It’s a lot of different things, so you’re going to look and say, ‘First of all, did we do the things we needed to do as coaches to help put them in positions?’ and then it’s going to be about block destruction, tackling, how we get off the blocks, how we tackle, have to look at that. [Bears RB D’Andre] Swift had a couple opportunities or had a couple plays that got some extra yards with some yards after making some guys miss. He’s an electric back, but again, I’ll have to look at exactly what all went down, but I know that when you’re giving up that many yards, everybody has a hand in that with where we are as far as where we are putting guys on defense, but then also how we block destruct and how we take on blocks and how we tackle.

 

Those factors of block destruction and those things, I’m sure there’s schematic parts of that, but in correcting, it seems like there might be a motivational, effort part of that toughness on how you get that across. How do you go about correcting that?

Nick Sirianni: I see our guys playing with extreme, extreme effort. That’s something that we talk about a lot. We look at a lot. We chart our loafs and our guys. I know I’ve seen for the past, what are we on? 11 games, extreme effort, so I’m never going to question that because they’ve proven it to me over and over and over again how hard they play for each other. I don’t think at all it was an effort thing.

 

1. What was your evaluation of QB Jalen Hurts’ performance?

Nick Sirianni: Obviously, we weren’t good enough as an offense, as a whole. Coaching, playing, everything. Obviously, go back, look at everything, but I thought he made some good plays, had some good scrambles, had some good things that he did. Just like all of us, he had some plays that he’ll want back and he had some really good plays, but again, we just weren’t consistent enough as a whole.

 

In scoring, to go down nine. What’s the thinking between the two-point version and the first touchdown and then the attempt on the second touchdown?

Nick Sirianni: Obviously, we had to get one at one point. We had to get a two-point conversion at one point. I’ve done a lot of studies on that in my notes down nine. I’m always going to go for a two in that scenario, so I followed the plan that– again, I don’t try to wing anything in situational football. That’s what I wanted to do. That’s in my notes from my studies in the past, and that’s what we did. Now, the thought behind it is you want to know exactly what you need right there. If you go down seven, then obviously it’s a one-score game. If you go down eight, I know it’s a one-score game as well. That’s what we do in that scenario. I’ll always go back and look and reconsider things. Had three timeouts there to be able to potentially kick it deep there if we did get it. Obviously, we didn’t in that particular case, but at some point, you’re going to need it and I always want to know early what I need going forward.