Eagles Head Coach Nick Sirianni (Post-Game Transcript)

You said earlier this week, the team that wins will be a better fundamental win on the margins. How do you think your team did today in that department in terms of the fundamentals?

Nick Sirianni: We did some good things. We work very hard at that. Neither team turned it over, so that’s good ball security on both ends of it. We did force that one fumble. They just ended up coming up with it. But, I thought we did it. I thought fundamentally we did some things. Obviously, there’s going to be some missed tackles. I know they have some good players. [Commanders QB] Jayden Daniels got out on one, made a couple of our guys miss on a long scramble in the open field. So, we’ll continue to work that. That’s always a tough one. You want to see it on tape, a lot of those things. But fundamentally, I thought we did some good things. There’s always going to be things to clean up in that matter. But yeah, it was a good start.

 

How was QB Jalen Hurts on that 22-yard scramble?

Nick Sirianni: That was huge. That was a big-time play. Being able to extend. I think one of the things that makes Jalen such a special quarterback is that he can do it through the air. He can do it running the show. He can do it with his legs when he needs to make plays, and obviously, that was a big play, and you need those. I think looking back — I spent a lot of time watching our first games over the past five years. Last year in Dallas, it was very similar, some of those scrambles that he made. Those were huge. Those are explosive plays. You don’t care how you get explosive plays. I think at the end of the day, I have to look at the numbers. I haven’t gotten this stat yet, but I think we won the explosive play battle, and we did a good job of making them go the long way.

 

But we needed those ones where we hit explosives whether it was a pass, whether it was Jalen scrambling, whether it was a [RB] Saquon [Barkley] run, we ended up scoring on those drives. You can see how important that is to the flow of the game and scoring points.

 

Did you think you could attack the middle with TE Dallas Goedert?

Nick Sirianni: In those situations, both those being third down calls, we were able to in those situations. Dallas is a phenomenal playmaker who, in my six years with him, just has always made plays in really big moments. Another two touchdowns for him. He brings it every day. I think that we had those calls called in those situations and him and Jalen went out and made a play. Obviously, we needed protection there as well and the whole thing worked there. We made a play on those two plays and credit to our guys and what they did there.

 

From your perspective, what do you think makes QB Jalen Hurts such a good deep ball thrower?

Nick Sirianni: You could say any person and then fill in the blank — what makes [DT] Jalen Carter good at taking a football, being able to knock the ball away? What makes [LB] Zack Baun a good tackler? What makes Jalen Hurts a good deep ball thrower? What makes [WR] DeVonta Smith a good pass catcher? There’s no secret to this. It’s the work. It’s the work. It’s the work that they put in.

 

Jalen has worked extremely hard at that portion of his game. He really can throw. He just puts the ball on the money in those situations, which helps you be explosive. On the first one to [WR] Tay [Wicks], the one to DeVonta, he’s worked at it. Obviously, highly talented person and a highly talented football player, but there is no secret to this. The plays that are made on Sunday were made because of the work that was put in in OTAs, in the offseason, in training camp. That happens Wednesday through Friday. There is no secret there. It takes what it takes and he’s worked his [butt] off on that.

 

Going into the second half and the way the defense was playing and having the lead, what was the way that you wanted Offensive Coordinator Sean Mannion to call it?

Nick Sirianni: Aggressive. Still be aggressive, still mixing, running the pass, making them second guess what might be coming. I thought they did a good job as well with how they called it and everything like that. But yeah, you don’t think about taking your — we don’t think about taking our foot off the gas as far as playing differently until we get into four-minute situations. Now, four-minute can start at different times depending on what the score is and where you are in the game and where you are on the field, but we don’t want to be a team that takes the foot off the gas and doesn’t play and tries to run-run-third for instance in those.

 

We’ve never been that regardless of — I’ve heard the question, ‘Did you take your foot off the gas?’ We’ve never really done that. We’ve never been in a situation where we said, ‘We are in four-minute now’ early in the game because we have a lead or the defense is playing [well]. Now, it may affect some decisions you make fourth down-wise and this and that, but again, you don’t go into those situations — that’s where Sean and I have been working well together. You don’t go in those situations until you’re in a four-minute mode. Obviously, we weren’t in that today until we got the onside kick and took the knees.

 

I know you didn’t ask this, but the guys work — a play that is one of the most selfless plays there is, is that onside kick. Smitty’s name doesn’t go in the paper — Let me ask you a question. Do you know who caught our onside kick in the Super Bowl in 2024? Nobody knows. [TE] Grant Calcaterra, because nobody really thinks about it unless the play doesn’t go the way you want it to go. Over our past five years — I had us do a stat — I think we’re 22-22 on onside kicks. That’s a lot of onside kicks. They work so hard.

 

DeVonta Smith works so hard with [K] Jake Elliott every Wednesday, every Thursday, every Friday, every special teams period and walkthrough of getting onside kicks. Dallas Goedert does the same. The backups do the same. And that’s my point. It’s the work that makes the plays. One of the most selfless things, again, is being able to block on that onside kick. That was actually a really good kick. It took a weird bounce. It didn’t take a normal bounce. It took a kind of weird one and DeVonta made it because of how much he’s worked at it. DeVonta’s going to get praise for all the other plays that he made, particularly that over the shoulder one. That just speaks to the selflessness of our guys of how much they’ve worked at that when we can’t even remember who the guy was who made the play in the Super Bowl in 2024.

 

In Offensive Coordinator Sean Mannion’s first game calling plays, what stood out?

Nick Sirianni: I thought he did a good job of getting the play in. The operation’s the first thing you always look at. I thought we were pretty balanced in our situations of the way we kind of break it down. I thought we were able to be explosive. We would’ve liked to finish the third one in the red zone because those are always big, but we were two-for-three in the red zone. Even in some tough situations, we got behind the sticks in the red zone on both of our first two scores, and I though he did a good job calling it on that one to try to get us back. Then the guys, obviously. Sean’s calling the plays, guys are out there making the plays happen.

 

How do you think they handled pressure?

Nick Sirianni: We’re going to have some work to do. We’ll look at the tape, but we’ll see. You never want to have a free runner. I don’t know if we had a free runner. So if we don’t have a free runner, then it comes down to execution and how we did that. Now, sometimes they can bring a free runner with one more than you can block and it is what it is. You’ve got to have other options there when that happens. But, we’ll look at the tape, but I think we can — We’ll see. Sitting here thinking of it, we had a couple of pressures, and we’ll see why those things happened in those situations.

 

DT Jalen Carter with the blocked extra point today. What’s it do for the team when one of your best defensive players, highest-paid defensive tackle in the league, not only plays special teams, but obviously gives full effort on special teams?

Nick Sirianni: It’s who we are. It’s who we are. He’s affected the game multiple times. It’s not just Jalen. Jalen Carter got his hand on it and he’s got a knack for that, he’s got a knack to take the football away, but it’s the team effort within it. Did that affect the kick that he missed? Maybe, which is huge. I think that’s a huge deal. Special teams is a full team effort, right? In openers, I was telling you guys this the other day, whenever we were talking, there were a lot of kicking errors as we looked at it and we were able to be sound in the kicking game.

 

Sure, there’s things that we’ve got to clean up. I think we’ve got to be better on kickoff, but we were sound in the kicking game. [WR Britian] Covey made good decisions. I think [RB] Tank [Bigsby] made a really good decision to take a knee where it was really close to give us the ball at the 35. We just made good decisions, and we blocked a kick in that situation.

 

It’s hard to be a good football team and not be good on punt, and it felt like we were good there. We had a leakage on one of the plays, but [P] Braden [Mann] punted the ball [well]. That’s why I said to the guys in there. We had some really good individual efforts. Braden punted the ball really well. That’s why it’s all hands on deck and that’s why it’s the ultimate team game. You win together as a team, you lose together as a team, and we got some good efforts from a lot of guys today.

 

You mentioned you got behind the sticks a fair amount today. Some of that was penalties, but the negative runs in particular, what do you think was —

Nick Sirianni: They did some things to obviously force that, but we know that they’re going to do things to be able to force that. You’ve got to be able to handle everything and, at minimum, get back to second-and-nine. It’s tough to be in those situations. We’ll look at the tape and see and kind of evaluate that thing. But no doubt, to do everything you want to do as an offense, whether that’s some tempo that we did on the ball, whether that’s being able to take some deep shots down the field, get multiple guys carries. You’ve got to get into the flow of the drive. We know that’s important and we’ll be working like crazy to do everything we can do to get that fixed.

 

On their two-point conversion, what did you see? What you could see from DT Moro Ojomo on that play?

Nick Sirianni: It looks like he just got really good push up front. Our guys do a good job of taking on blocks and putting their hands on offensive linemen before they can put hands on them. So, it looked like that. I was kind of sitting there in that situation. I knew if we got that one and then we got the onside kick, the game was over with where the clock was. In a situation like that, I’m talking to [Defensive Coordinator] Vic [Fangio] and saying, ‘Hey, if there’s something you don’t like, call a timeout here.’ So, my eyes are kind of everywhere there. I tend to see things in the secondary a little bit more, so I’m watching how we’re matching routes. I’m not sure I got a great look of it. I just kind of saw a good push right there and he made a good play.

I think, again, it’s not just one person. Something else happened good on that play as well that forced that. So, I’ll look at the tape, but great play by Moro to get that stop right there.