Eagles Head Coach Nick Sirianni (Post-Game Transcript)

Q. What happened on the timeout that you had to burn on the second to last drive?

NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, no, we were planning on going a delay there and taking our timeout to try to go there.

So, nothing. That wasn’t on [T] Fred [Johnson].

 

Q. What was your thought process on the third and three call on the pass? Is there a mechanism where QB Jalen Hurts just sits down and takes a sack?

NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, definitely. You know, they were running a certain defense and junking it up in the middle, so we were trying to go around the outside and it didn’t work.

 

Q. What was your thought pattern there on going kicking the field goal on fourth and three. Did you think about going for it?

NICK SIRIANNI: You know, again, in that scenario I was thinking they might not have any timeouts there, but obviously they did with the incomplete pass.

You know, but that would’ve come down to maybe a minute, so we wanted to go up six points; it didn’t work.

So, the decision to pass it there, again, like I said, they were junking it up inside, with it being fourth and three to go for it, I thought with them not having any timeouts I wanted them to be down a touchdown and see if they could drive the field and they did.

Hats off to them.

 

Q. When you look at the final two minutes what do you take away from this and what caused it?

NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, you know, they made a couple more plays than we did down the stretch. We made some plays; they made more.

And that’s on all of us. That starts with coaching and goes to the players. We are all responsible for the loss. That’s how close games are in this league, right? 22-21; sometimes it just comes down to a couple plays.

It’s never just one play, it’s never just that play. All the plays equal up to the win or the loss.

 

Q. D-lineman just had one sack in two games. Not a lot of pressures. Are you getting enough from your pass rush from your front four?

NICK SIRIANNI: We’ll look at this game and see what happened. Sometimes you have to earn the right to rush, meaning you have got to have them in passing situations. Didn’t seem like we had some passing situations today. They were in third and manageable or second and manageable.

So sometimes you have to earn the right to rush.

Like I said, when they were ahead of the sticks, that makes it a little bit harder on the pass rush. We’ll look at the tape of this game — Yeah, we’ll see what it is.

 

Q. See you guys used a tackle circuit a lot. Seems like in key moments there has been a lot of missed tackles. What do you do at this point in the season? I know it’s early.

NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, it’s early. We’ll keep working on our tackling, just like you keep working on your ball security, just like you keep working on your catch circuits, just like you keep working on trying to take away the football.

But, yeah, a couple missed tackles in some situations. A couple good tackles. I thought the guys, early, had great effort to the football. We knew we needed to do that with [RB] Bijan [Robinson] the way he can make somebody miss.

It felt like when he would make somebody miss, there would be somebody right there on his hip. We knew he would get some that would make some guys miss, but our emphasis was trying to make sure we were there with the rest of the guys to pick up the pieces.

 

Q. Is there any teaching point, anything to point out with those illegal downfield — I think there were three of them today; some RPOs.

NICK SIRIANNI: Some of them are on us as coaches; some of them are on a player going too fast. We coach that, not to go too fast. But, some of them are on us in certain scenarios when we call them.

It’s really hard to get called, in my opinion, to get called for a bubble screen. Being able to throw a bubble screen out there, that happens so quickly.

But it looked like they made the right call on all those. It’s just hard when you can’t throw that bubble screen out there when they load the box on something like that.

We’ve got to play the rules that are there. I thought, again, like I said, the referees were right on the calls. Sometimes it was a coaching thing and sometimes a player thing.

 

Q. Are there decisions you would’ve done differently in hindsight?

NICK SIRIANNI: Sure. Any time you go and you don’t get points on a drive in the red zone, fourth and three in the first one, you’re like, ‘Should I have went for that there?’ I went for a fourth and three after that, after the completion to [TE] Dallas [Goedert] that got us to fourth and three. We got that and we got points out of that.

Any time it doesn’t work out, you know, that’s why I’m sitting in this seat, the head coaching seat, I’ve got to be ready for the consequences of whether it works or doesn’t work.

In that scenario, obviously didn’t work. Obviously, I’m going to second guess myself in those scenarios that it doesn’t. Same thing on the third and three. It was an incomplete pass. Sometimes that works; sometimes it doesn’t work.

You know, all I can do is go back and review those and say, ‘Did I like what we did here? Would we do it again or would we change directions next time?’ Everything is thought out of what we want to do, but that’s this game of football. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. In those cases, it didn’t, so I got to rethink it.

 

Q. With QB Jalen Hurts’ interception late there, were you comfortable with him pushing the ball down the field?

NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, we got press man on one of our best players. I didn’t see the entire play. I’ll have to see exactly what happened, but the intent of that play was to go down the field.

You know, he took a chance, and the guy made a good play. I’ll have to look at the play exactly and see what happened.

 

Q. It looked like while running QB Jalen Hurts had a burst that he hadn’t had in a while. Did you guys pick up on that? Did you want to lean on him in his run game today?

NICK SIRIANNI: You know, some of his big runs came on scrambles. There were a couple that were uncalled runs. I thought obviously any time an interception happens you’re going to want that back, but I thought — I looked up at the scoreboard at one point, he was 20 of 25, making a lot of plays for our team in the run game and pass game. I thought he really played an outstanding game.

Again, we’ll all have things that we want back. I think the biggest issue on offense was we weren’t good enough in the red zone. Jalen did a lot of things to help us to be in that football game and have a chance to win that football game.

He played a really good game. Obviously the last play didn’t go as we wanted.

 

Q. You mentioned the early fourth and three. What was the thought process on third down?

NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, sometimes — you can’t just be every time it’s third and three you say you’re going to run it. Teams obviously pick up on that if every time you’re third and three you’re going to run it and set yourself up for fourth down.

So sometimes you’ve got to throw quick, sometimes you’ve got to run it, sometimes you’ve got to set yourself up. Sometimes you have two opportunities to get it on third and three with two passes. Sometimes you have the opportunities to get it with runs.

Again, we can’t just be too predictable that we’re going to say, ‘Hey, every third and three if you’re in four down mode you’re going to run the football.’ That’s not realistic in this league. There are too many good coaches in this league.

Hey, didn’t work on this particular one. Shoot, I would like to have those back.

 

Q. Can you clarify on the calls, Offensive Coordinator Kellen Moore is making that —

NICK SIRIANNI: Kellen is the offensive coordinator that makes the calls, yeah. If you’re trying to stir that up. I’m the head coach.

 

Q. On the broadcast they said WR A.J. Brown is going to miss a few weeks.

NICK SIRIANNI: We’ll see. We’ll see. I don’t know that yet. You know I won’t give you that information yet because I don’t know. We’ll see how that goes.

 

Q. Losing a player of that magnitude late in the week, you already had a game plan I guess Wednesday, and he’s such a big part of it. How much does that change it for you?

NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, you adjust it. Like we’ve been in league long enough where those things have happened. You play enough games that that happens, and we have contingency plans.

You change the game plan around. You still want to attack them a certain way, but now you’re going to use different players in how you attack them. So obviously A.J. being down, he’s one of the best players in the NFL, so you’re going to miss him.

Yeah, us having the time to go over and switch everything, we had plenty of time to do that. You know, like I said, I think that the offense, where we struggled on offense was more so in the red zone. We moved the ball well.

So, it was those struggles in the red zone we’ve got to get corrected, because you’ve got to score points down there. Sometimes it was like you guys have said, I went for it in those scenarios; sometimes we stopped ourselves.

 

Q. When you’re giving up four or five, six yards on first and second down, running plays, put you in a bad spot rushing the passer, is there anything schematically that needs to change to guard against the run up front?

NICK SIRIANNI: Every game is a little bit different. There are many different ways that you can put yourself in position. Obviously it starts with our fundamentals and technique of how we get movement. That’s where it’s always going to start. We can call whatever we want. It’s going to come down to our fundamentals.

This is football. It doesn’t matter what level you’re at. It’s how you tackle, it’s how you defeat blocks, it’s how you pierce the line of scrimmage. And then we’ve got to be able to make sure we put them in positions to succeed. There are plenty of ways to do it.

Sometimes with five down front, sometimes it’s with the six down front, sometimes it’s with the pressure, sometimes it’s with secondary pressure, sometimes it’s with blitz zero, sometimes it’s moving the front. I mean, yeah, we’ve got to do what we need to do to help put them in positions.

It’s not just ever, ‘Hey, do this to stop this.’ That’s just not how football works. There are many different answers, and we’ve got to find the right answers and help put the guys in position and the guys got make plays.

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