Eagles Head Coach Nick Sirianni (Post-Game Transcript)
0-for-11 on third down, 2-for-9 last week. What is it? Execution? Is it play calling? Is it scheme? It seems like you have 20 third down opportunities. There should be something you could go to and pick some up.
Nick Sirianni: Obviously, everybody contributed to that. Everybody. So, there’s execution errors, there’s coaching errors. Everybody contributes to it. It’s an ultimate team game. You can’t sustain drives and do the things that you want — Some of our problems offensively has been [that] we’ve been behind, but it wasn’t quite the same case today where we were in second-and-long and all those different things. It was more we couldn’t convert on third down for multiple different reasons. So again, there’s always a lot of contributors to that. I need to go watch the tape before I react to anything. But I know when you’re 0 for whatever we were today, everybody has a hand in that. Our job is to figure out what happened and get better from it and not assign blame. That’s what we’ll be doing.
The fourth-and-two decision from the goal line. Can you take me into why you made that decision and then the —
Nick Sirianni: In that situation right there, try to make it a three score game. It was a two score game, up 10. We would’ve gone up 13, but I wanted to make it a three score game right there. Fourth-and-two from the two, you leave them in a true backed up scenario. I’m very well aware of how the fourth down decisions go as the head coach. You go for it and you get it, great. You go for it and you don’t get it, that’s on the head coach. We didn’t get it, so that’s on me. A lot of things that we’ve got to look at and see what went down on that particular play, obviously same deal. It wasn’t good enough as coaches and wasn’t good enough at playing there.
They blitzed on every third down. Clearly you guys are having troubles at pass protection, having the right numbers to protect QB Jalen Hurts. What is the issue there?
Nick Sirianni: Again, there’s different things that lead to that. Again, it’s never — I know you guys are looking for answers. I respect the job you guys have to do. It’s never just, ‘Hey, it’s this.’ I wouldn’t say never. Sometimes it is, but in my opinion of what happened in that situation on third down, it wasn’t good enough obviously, but it wasn’t just one thing that accounted for it. That is something definitely I’ll have to look at and watch through. But again, 0-for on third down, that hurts. It hurts your drives. It hurts you being able to do the things that you want to do on offense. It can put you in a pressing situation at times. One of them obviously turned into a fourth down conversion that did lead to points, but that to me is where we had our biggest issues here today, was there.
Then not being able to finish with — We got a short field with [S] Andrew [Mukuba]’s pick. We lose yards on a run play there playing that kind of like, ‘Hey, you have four downs, two more downs to get it on third down, then we lose yards.’ And then third-and-two at the two, to not finish that one, you’re essentially putting the game away there in that scenario and we didn’t in that particular case. I think what has to happen at the end of the day, what I told our guys is that when you’ve got a team down, you’ve got to finish it. That’s everybody. Coaching, playing, everybody.
Do you expect to have Eagles RT Lane Johnson back?
Nick Sirianni: We’ll see where we are.
That sequence of events with Eagles RT Lane Johnson, what information did you get when you got it and how you addressed it with the team?
Nick Sirianni: I think you guys know that he’s dealing with a personal matter and that’s really all I’m going to say on that.
With Eagles T Markel Bell, obviously very difficult circumstances. I know you have to watch the film, but for his first start, how do you think?
Nick Sirianni: Sometimes it’s hard to see exactly what’s happening with an offensive lineman unless it’s going really bad, I feel like sometimes — I didn’t feel like, ‘Hey, that one was on Markel.’ We’ll see. We’ve got to watch the tape. But I thought he battled and went in there and played his butt off. I know he was coming off the field every time, just having given it his all. He was ready to play and you love that about him. We’ll have to look at the tape, but I think he battled and played his butt off.
Before that fourth down at the two, it looked like you were trying to call a time out. Was that a play call thing? Was that a time —
Nick Sirianni: It just looked like we were running out of time and then by the time — it looked like we had everything settled off and I had my hands there close and we looked like we got it off. It just felt like it was more of a time thing. Not anybody not knowing anything. It was more, ‘Hey, we were getting low on that clock,’ but we ended up beating the clock on that. It just didn’t work.
Eagles LT Jordan Mailata said the outside zone should be the DNA of this run scheme. You guys had success in the first half running it. You had success with RB Saquon Barkley on the first play. I think you only did it a few times after that. Why’d you guys get away from it?
Nick Sirianni: I’ll have to look at how many times that we called it. Sometimes there’s checks built into it, sometimes there’s not. I felt like we had it called a handful more times. I feel like we got to some of the gap things that we ran today that compliment that, that we hit a couple of those out of there. At the end of the day, not good enough on our part offensively and put the defense in some bad positions.
Again, anytime you’re 0-for-12 on there — I’ve got a ton of confidence in [Offensive Coordinator] Sean [Mannion] and he’s going to wear a lot of this. There’s no doubt. I’m going to wear a lot of this. Our offense is going to wear a lot of this. You win together, you lose together. I have no complaints on what happened there today. There’s opportunity for us all to grow following this game, win, lose, draw. There’s always opportunities for growth and then we’ve got to be committed to continuing to get better, and that will be the emphasis this week.
The injuries overall. I know ‘next man up’ is the mentality, but when you have five, six, seven ‘next men’ kind of in there, is there a cumulative challenge when you’re integrating guys that —
Nick Sirianni: You could ask me that question if we had 30 guys down. I’m never going to use anything as an excuse. We have to look at ourselves in the mirror. We have to pick ourselves back up and you have to do — Life hands you a lot of different scenarios. Football hands you a lot of different scenarios. You’ve got to be accountable to who you are and to what you do, each and every one of us. You’ll never hear me say a word about an injury. I have a lot of faith in everybody on this football team. There’s a reason they’re Philadelphia Eagles. I’ve got to do a better job. We’ve got to play better. We’ve got to coach better. All of us have things to get better from. I don’t care who’s on the field.
Are you seeing improvement from this team?
Nick Sirianni: There are things obviously that I definitely have seen us improve on, but then there’s still little mistakes that we’re making — coaching, playing — that we’ve got to continue to clean up. I don’t think improvement always looks exactly how we want it to look. Improvement’s not, ‘Hey, it’s like this.’ Sometimes it’s going to feel like you’re here, you’re here, you’re all over the place. I know that all we’ve got to do is continue to put the right work in. We know our formula of how we need to do that within the week and we have to trust that even though sometimes growth feels invisible, you’ve got to trust and keep putting the work in.
I know you have guys down and it’s still early. It’s only four games in, but what is the identity of the offense?
Nick Sirianni: Obviously, it hasn’t been good enough. I think that’s still — you’re trying to make sure as you find out who you are that you’re playing with detail and you’re playing together and you’re playing with toughness, and we’ve still got a ways to go there and it’s obvious that we’re still trying to figure that out.