Nick Sirianni

Q. As far as 49ers QB Brock Purdy, I know you didn’t draft any quarterbacks last year, but was he on your radar at all even after the draft period? (Ed Kracz)

NICK SIRIANNI: Sure. You do your homework on everybody. A guy that has won as many games and as many records as he did, of course you’re going to do your homework on him. He had really good college tape, that’s for sure, and he has good pro tape. He’s done a nice job since he got into this league.

Q. During the bye week, because some of the opponents you could’ve faced were teams you’d already played, did you do any work ahead on the 49ers? (Bo Wulf)

NICK SIRIANNI: No, no. Because there was no possibility for us to play them that week.

Q. How are WR A.J. Brown and CB Avonte Maddox looking? (Shamus Clancy)

NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, we’re expecting everybody to be doing stuff at practice today. We’re hopeful that they’re going to be ready to go, but we’ll take it one day at a time.

Q. The finalists for coach of the year came out. You’re not one of the top three. What’s your reaction? (Zach Berman)

NICK SIRIANNI: Oh, man (jokingly). Hey, [Senior Vice President, Communications] Bob [Lange] did just tell me that when we walked down here. Yeah, that’s something I can’t control. Those awards are nice and everything like that. I’m really happy for [QB] Jalen [Hurts] and [Offensive Coordinator] Shane [Steichen] that they’re on that, but we have obviously much bigger things ahead and in our sights than individual awards.

Q. On that topic, what is your case for QB Jalen Hurts as MVP? (Jamie Apody)

NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, shoot, his body of work speaks for itself. He’s had a phenomenal year. Now, I get to watch it, I’m biased, right, and I get to watch every one of his games and correct every one of his games. Obviously, I know there is other players that have been playing good as well.

Again, I think [QB] Jalen [Hurts] is going to say the same thing. Yeah, awards are nice, but we have much bigger team goals in mind. And I hope Jalen wins it, right, because you want that for your players. He’s had a great year. But I know there is other people deserving as well. He’s just going to continue to go about his business and get ready for this next game.

Q. You talked about home field advantage a lot, sometimes when you’re on the road, but as an offensive coach, what does that do to affect communication typically? (John McMullen)

NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, I mean, you have to do different things with your snap count, you have to do different things with your signals, and your communication out to the perimeter.

Just everything has to be done without being able to speak to each other so you have to signal different things, and so there is just a lot that has to happen because of the noise.

And we know how much work we put in when we go to a rowdy stadium. There is a lot of work that has to be done. You don’t just do it game day. You have to practice it just like you practice everything else.

And so that’s a big advantage. That is a big advantage for the defense, it’s a big advantage for the defensive home team obviously, and it’s a big advantage for the home team. We know how good our fans are here and how rowdy they are, how loud they are. This place is incredible.

You know, obviously you get the bye when you get the one seed, but you also get the home field advantage, and they’re equally as important.

Q. How has your preparation and message, if at all, changed this week? (Jeff McLane)

NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, you know what I’m going to say, right?

Q. Do you reach out to anybody in terms of guys who have been up to this stage since you never have? (Jeff McLane)

NICK SIRIANNI: No. The schedule being a normal week, is still the same. So as far as the message and the whole thing, it doesn’t change, right? You don’t do something for this long and have a successful — you know, you’re tweaking things and your process at all times. Do you fully just completely go one way or the other? No.

You’re always in the business of saying, how am I going to get my process as good as I possibly can, and it’s an ever-evolving thing. So, we just stick to the same thing we been doing, because you don’t want to make it, again, there is always a scenario in the NFL where you can make it bigger than just the next game, whether that’s the playoffs, whether that’s the guy going to his hometown, whether that’s a guy playing against his former team.

I mean, there are so many different scenarios that you can do that with, so we just stick true to the process and be one day at a time.

Q. We talk so much about players on this stage and how they handle the pressure of that. How about you personally? (Dave Zangaro)

NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, again, it’s our next game. It’s our next game and it’s our next opportunity to play for each other. Again, you go through your process of everything.

We’re in Philly, first of all. The pressure, again, I’ve told this story a thousand times, right. Last year, right, it’s okay; we’re in a rebuilding year. We were in that first pre-season game and we were getting drummed at halftime and we were getting booed, so we know the expectations here and we know our expectations. It’s the expectations of this great city and this great fan base, but it’s also our expectations. We don’t get to this point in our profession with saying, hey, not every game is important and every practice isn’t important.

Like we’re here for a reason. It’s because we have that competitive drive. And then when your main goal of every week is to improve and to not let your guy down next to you and to make sure that you’re doing your job because you love your teammate, you love your players, then that’s all the motivation you need.

And that’s a lot. When you’re playing, again, I’ve said the greatest motivation is love. It 100% is. So when you’re playing for your teammates and you are coaching for your players and your players are playing for their coaches, there is no greater motivation.

And that’s high pressure. That’s every week and that’s every day of our preparation.

Q. We saw you last week mugging for the camera on the sidelines. (Tim McManus)

NICK SIRIANNI: It was like right in my face. I was juiced. We were up a couple scores. It just was like right there. Like, I don’t know, that was the first thing that came to my mind. I guess that’s just who I am.

Q. We have seen you yelling into the stands and things like that. That demonstrative nature, maybe even playing the role of antagonist sometimes, is that something that’s always been with you? (Tim McManus)

NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, you can ask some of the people from the neighboring high school or the rival colleges. Ask some John Carroll guys or Baldwin Wallace guys. I know my brother married a girl from our rival high school. Kind of rival. A little smaller school.

They have all sorts of family members there, and my brother will go to an event at Randolph and he’ll be like, you know the people there still don’t like you from all the things that you did when you were playing against them.

All I care about is our team and I’m not really concerned about anything else that anybody thinks except for our team and trying to help those guys to be in position to make plays and make them the best football players they can possibly be.

Q. Who reminds you most of yourself that way? (Bo Wulf)

NICK SIRIANNI: I guess after you said, the first person that came to mind was [S] Chauncey [Gardner-Johnson].

Q. What’s the benefit to have guys like C Jason Kelce, DT Fletcher Cox, DE Brandon Graham, RT Lane Johnson, who have been here for a decade, through everything, ups and downs, Super Bowl? What does that give you? (Reuben Frank)

NICK SIRIANNI: It’s everything in the sense of — I’ve said this before, too, like when I first got the job here, right? I said I wasn’t like other first-year head coaches. Why do I say that? And why I said that was because I had these unbelievable players that have been to the mountaintop that have played in this league for ten plus years, two on the offensive line, two on the defensive line, and like that’s a huge, huge advantage to have those leaders on your football team.

We have great people on this football team and we have great leaders on this team, and so to have those guys that have been to the top of the mountain and know what it takes, we’ve got great leaders and they lead the way with how you practice, with how you prepare, how you play in any game, and they’ve been in this game.

And then we have guys that like may not have been in [this game] but that have played in big time college games as well. So that winning, right, the knowing what it takes to be successful, if you play ten years in this league you’re successful. Knowing the wins that they’ve had, that’s obviously a huge advantage for our football team.

Q. RT Lane Johnson’s first real test, real game, how do you think his body has responded? (Reporter)

NICK SIRIANNI: It’s day by day. Obviously, he’s going to be sore. I’ll let [RT] Lane [Johnson] tell you how he feels. He came out, we feel, like healthy from that game and played a really good game against good competition with the Giants.

Just happy to have him back out there. Again, I’ll let him answer how his body feels. I’m sure he was sore coming out of it, but we’re excited that he’s back, because he’s one the best offensive tackles, if not the best offensive tackle. He is the best offensive tackle in the NFL.

Q. What kind of things did you do when you were in college that guys from other colleges didn’t like? (Martin Frank)

NICK SIRIANNI: I don’t know. That was too long ago. Probably just the same celebration stuff. A little chitchat here and there.

Q. Nothing that stands out? (Martin Frank)

NICK SIRIANNI: Nothing that stands out.

Q. What was Behind the two attempted fakes to draw off the Giants and why didn’t it work? (Jeff McLane)

NICK SIRIANNI: I think that’s a competitive advantage if I get into that. I’m going to just not answer that question.

Q. You talked about the team leaders and the fact that those guys have been to the Super Bowl, but on the flip side, there’s a lot of people, including yourself as a head coach, that have never been there and you’re so close now you can taste it. As a human and a competitor, how do you stay in that same mindset without looking ahead even though you’re right there? (Reporter)

NICK SIRIANNI: You know, Frank Reich would always say this to me: No man suddenly becomes different than his cherished thoughts and habits. Meaning no one suddenly becomes different. You are who you’ve been the whole time.

It goes back to the, oh, this is a bigger game than this or this. They’ve all been big. Just because you’re in this moment doesn’t mean — like I show a picture to the team every week of a mountain, right? There’s the top of the mountain, you can see it, but the guy’s vision is just on the steps right there.

So when your focus is that for 17 or 18 weeks or whatever week we’re on right now — it’s been a long season, whatever it is — your focus doesn’t change because the situation or the game around you or the opponent changes. You still focus on one step at a time.

The higher you climb on the mountain, and this is an analogy of a mountain and this is an analogy of a football team. I get it. It gets windier, right? The conditions get tougher, it gets a little steeper, it gets a little harder to breathe.

So now what an unbelievable time to just focus on the next step and the next step and the next step and don’t look up. I got kind of goosebumps thinking about that because that’s what we’ve been doing all year. That’s just what we do and no man suddenly becomes different than his cherished thoughts and habits.

Q. Jeffrey Lurie spoke to the team after you guys clinched about the meeting you had before the season started, what’s your recollection of that meeting? (Zach Berman)

NICK SIRIANNI: You know, obviously [Philadelphia Eagles Owner/Chairman/CEO] Mr. [Jeffrey] Lurie and I, we’ll have conversations on the field and after games and everything like that. I’ll keep a lot of those conversations private. Every conversation is always about how much he believes in us, which is great to hear the head of organization and owner of the team, the leader of the organization tell you that, and how he’ll do anything he can do to help us do our jobs.

You can feel that and the players can feel that. We’ve got the best owner in the NFL.

Q. He said you didn’t blink when he talked about what the goal was this year or what the expectation was this year. What was your thinking at that particular moment? (Zach Berman)

NICK SIRIANNI: Want to make sure that I do my best job for a guy that’s giving me everything he’s got. I’m going to give him everything I got.

Q. Going back to 2021 when you changed the offense mid-season, did you anticipate it evolving the way it has? Anything surprised you along the way? (Reporter)

NICK SIRIANNI: No, you don’t just change. We adapt. Doing things more of what we’ve been doing and stuff like that. So it wasn’t like it was this whole flip of a change.

It was just, hey, everybody wants immediate success, and I get it. That’s part of this league. Everybody wants immediate answers, everything. But it sometimes takes time to figure out exactly who you are as a football team and what you’re good at, what you need to continue on with and what you need to table off to the side and what you need to get better at.

All the different things, right? So that’s a process. It takes time. Bye weeks are really important for that. Your off-season studies are really important to that. Your week-to-week studies are really important to that.

So it was a gradual work into, ‘Hey, here’s what we’re doing well,’ and we’re still figuring that out. We’re still, ‘Man, we’re pretty good at this’. There are still conversations that are happening. Like the bye week a couple weeks ago, man, we’re good at this. I didn’t know we were this good at this.

So this is a constant evolving. If you’re not adapting and evolving you’re going to get passed up, and so it’s a constant evolving and constant part of going back to our process of how we go about it and trying to perfect our process.

We’re playing really good offensive football right now and we have a great offensive line, we’ve got a great quarterback, skill guys, running backs. [Executive Vice President/General Manager] Howie [Roseman] has done a great job putting this team together and we’re playing good football right now on offense.

Q. You said this week that you’ve never been around anybody with the will to win like QB Jalen Hurts, which is a huge statement. What does he do during the week that is different than other quarterbacks you’ve worked with? Anything in his preparation because he is so even keeled all the time? (Reporter)

NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, he really is. He’s always here. He’s always here. And he grew up in a football family. His dad is a football coach. Speaking from another guy whose dad is a football coach, you don’t leave that building and his DNA — it’s in his DNA to be here at all times working on his craft. Whether that’s in the weight room, whether that’s in the training room, whether that’s in the film room, this guy is obsessed with getting better. He’s obsessed with getting better.

The thing I really admire about that is that he doesn’t allow — again, the season can go like this (motioning up and down), right, and it does that and that’s just the nature of the season, but he doesn’t allow the highs or the lows of the season dictate his next move. He is so even keeled and so locked in. That will to win. Again, it’s all that, it’s all him being here, him leading his teammates, him connecting with his teammates, all those different things.

What you said, he’s so even keeled. I find that a big part of his will to win, right, in the sense of like — he just played an unbelievable game but he’s got this look on his face like, I can do more. I’m going to get better from it. It’s amazing.

Like when you really do study — one of my favorite things to do, I’ve said it in here a thousand times — is study great coaches, study great teams, study great players, and that was that common denominator of Kobe and Michael Jordan of just like how do I get better? How do I get better?

He’s obsessed with it. I can’t say it enough. It’s probably hard for me to completely explain exactly how obsessed he is, but I think that’s why he is like this. I’m just like, I’m going to get better from this. It’s an excitement. He’s special.