Nick Sirianni

Q. I’m sure you’re aware that C Jason Kelce on Sunday will set the franchise mark for consecutive starts. What’s the most impressive part of that streak to you? (Dave Zangaro)

NICK SIRIANNI: The consistency and the high level of play. I mean, this game, obviously there is a ton of wear and tear on these guys’ bodies, and the fact that he’s done it for so long so consistently at a very high level, man, it’s a special thing.

Consistency as a player, consistency with his health. That takes a lot of work, too, just making sure that he’s ready to go each and every week.

So, hats off to him, hats off to our trainers and staff that help him do that. Just really impressive.

Q. What happened to DT Jalen Carter and what’s his status for Sunday? (Martin Frank)

NICK SIRIANNI: We’ll see. We’ll get you guys some more information here today, but we’ll see. We had a little injury in practice Wednesday, which you saw in the injury report.

So, we’ll see where he is and what the status will be. Obviously don’t have to make a decision quite yet. We still want to wait and see how he’s feeling as we continue on the rest of the day.

Q. Do you feel like you avoided a long-term injury with DT Jalen Carter at least? (Tim McManus)

NICK SIRIANNI: Again, we’ll let you know about what’s going to happen and his status for this week, but I don’t see it as something keeping him out very long.

Q. How has LB Nakobe Dean progressed to you this week? What have you seen from him? (John McMullen)

NICK SIRIANNI: I think he worked so hard when he was gone just to stay around everything and to be around everything, and really made a push last week. When I asked him if he wanted to be at that game last week, he emphatically said ‘yes, I want to be there.’

So mentally I didn’t feel like there was a big change of anything because he had worked so hard while he was gone. It was just the progression of the week, getting into individual periods, getting into team periods, and making sure that he was ready to go.

He’s looking like he’s going to be there, and we’re excited about that as a football team.

Q. What happened with CB Darius Slay? (Zach Berman)

NICK SIRIANNI: We’ll give you more information here of what is going to happen here with him this week. He’s feeling good. We’ll get you that information. If he does have to miss this week, we don’t anticipate it being a long-term thing.

Q. You’ve had so many injuries in the secondary. It seems like injuries often come at certain positions. How has that group as a whole kind of handled that? (Reuben Frank)

NICK SIRIANNI: I think they had a major challenge last week with the players and the pass offense that we went against, and they’ll have a challenge this week as well.

But I thought they have done a nice job of next man up, you know, just everyone ready to play. Credit to [Defensive Backs Coach] D.K. [McDonald] and the defensive coaches of having guys ready to go. That’s always a challenge, to make sure that everybody is ready to go with limited reps.

So that’s [Defensive Coordinator] Sean [Desai], too, with how he has to call it and different things like that. But it just speaks to the character of that group that they’ve worked hard, they’re ready to go when their number is called, and they’ve continued to get better throughout the year.

And so, again, you never want to see injuries happen, but the guys that have stepped in and helped us win our last five games, it’s been a true group effort by that defensive back group.

Q. TE Jack Stoll had a shoulder thing that put him on the injury report. How ready is TE Albert Okwuegbunam if he needs to step in? (Ed Kracz)

NICK SIRIANNI: He’s worked hard as well. Again, we do a lot of different things to make sure that our guys are ready to go that might not get a lot of reps.

We have a developmental walk-through; we have a developmental 7 on 7 we do every day. We have non-carded periods where our twos are going against the ones in the attempt to help the ones with the speed, but also with unknown looks, while it’s also helping the twos get reps of our plays that we’re going to have in.

So, we’re confident that we do everything we can to get the guys to have as many reps as possible, and then like I said, we just feel good about our guys and how they work. It’s a culture that our veterans have set of the hard work of getting ready in practice, and so we feel good about Albert.

He’s been here since the beginning of the season and he’s had a lot of reps, and we feel like he will be ready to go when his number is called.