Nick Sirianni

Q. I know physicality and toughness are two things you’ve really preached since you’ve been here. When you watch the tape against the Giants, did you feel like those two things were up to your standard? (Eliot Shorr-Parks)

Nick Sirianni: Toughness entails a lot of different things, right? When we speak of toughness, we’re talking about our effort, our physicality, and our mental toughness. I think that at the end of the day, they obviously had more yards than us rushing, and they did a good job. You’ve got to give credit to them. I know how physical our guys are at the line of scrimmage, and we need to continue to make that what’s been successful for us there.

I know how tough our guys are physically, mentally, and effort-wise, but again, when a team has more rushing yards than you, it’s not just, ‘Hey, it’s on that.’ It’s on all of us. Anytime we’re in a streak where we are right now, having lost two games in a row, we’re not ever here to assign blame. We’re here to find solutions, and that’s what this whole weekend is about. How do we put the guys in positions to be more physical? How are their bodies feeling to put them in position?

So, always look inward first, but we know a strength of our team has been winning at the line of scrimmage, and I know I have so much confidence in these guys, offensive line and defensive line, that we’ll get back to that.

Q. Obviously last year, you had the early bye. You spent that week kind of figuring out certain things with the offense and everything. I was just wondering, obviously you probably used this past weekend the same way. What kind of things stood out most of all about the inconsistencies you’ve been seeing on offense so far through the first six games? (Martin Frank)

Nick Sirianni: I think this weekend was good for us to be able to really dive into a lot of those things. Obviously, you don’t have the same amount of time that you have in a bye-week, but you treat it as a mini bye-week and it’s also important that everyone gets a chance to rest and recover because when you’re on a short week– coaches, players, everybody, you put yourself behind a little bit in all departments.

So, there was a little bit of rest and relaxation, and then there was a lot of trying to figure things out, and obviously not going to dive too deep into that of what. We have a lot of thoughts, a lot of things that we want to put into action. I know [Offensive Coordinator] Kevin [Patullo] kind of talked about some of those things with our offense today, but I think when you look at it, just being more efficient on first and second down, because right now, we’re not near our standard on third down. Well, why is that? Well, third-and-seven plus, -eight plus, it’s going to be harder to convert than third-and-shorters.

A lot of that is the efficiency. We looked at that. That’s in the run game and in the pass game and coming up with solutions there. Again, not in this sport, do you ever want to get into a situation where it’s a blame. So, it’s always about finding solutions. We feel like we did some of that, now we’ve got to go put it to work and I’m excited about that opportunity. This isn’t like you lose this one and then you’ve got to wait again to play for a year. No, we get an opportunity to go out, get better from this, continue to come together as a football team and get back to work.

Q. Wondering how surprised you were that OLB Za’Darius Smith walked away from football and what your reaction was. What’s your confidence level in the other guys you have with OLB Nolan Smith still out for a couple more weeks? (Reuben Frank)

Nick Sirianni: Obviously, I found out this morning a little bit before you guys did. I wish him the best, and I really enjoyed having him on this football team while he was on this football team. As far as my confidence in the guys there on that defensive line, a lot of confidence in them. A lot of guys that have played. Young guy in [OLB] Jalyx [Hunt] who’s continuing to get better each and every week. My confidence in him is so high. And then you’ve got guys that have played a lot of football, and I’m excited about those guys and continuing to help them get better within our schemes.

So yeah, I like that position. I like the depth that we have at that position. Just the numbers of how they play now, it’d be distributed a little bit differently, but I have confidence in those guys and that group that we have going into this next game.

Q. If I could just follow up really quick, did you have a chance to talk to OLB Za’Darius Smith, and if so, did he give you any sense of why he did this now? (Reuben Frank)

Nick Sirianni: I’ll let him answer any of those questions like that. Obviously, always keep any conversations private, but wish him the best and really enjoyed being around him for this past month or so.

Q. I know it’s not obviously all on Offensive Coordinator Kevin Patullo, but where’s your confidence level in him to come up with some of the answers to get the offense turned around? (Dave Zangaro)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, like I said earlier, not in this sport is it ever on one person and we’re not in the business of assigning blame. We’re in the business of finding solutions. As we watched the tape today, it was a little on everything and that’s this game of team football. I know that we live in a world that wants to assign blame, point the finger, but that’s not the reality of what good teams do. That’s not reality of this sport, and we’ve got a lot of confidence in Kevin and the offensive staff and love some of the thoughts that we have.

I know you’ll ask them, ‘Hey, what were some of the things you found on the bye-week?’ They’re probably not going to tell you those things either. It’s not good for us to share that with our opponents, but a lot of confidence in there. And again, we’re all about finding solutions. I saw that quote of [former NFL Head Coach] Bill Parcells a long time ago of finding solutions, and that’s what we’re in the business of.

Q. Finding solutions during this mini-bye, did that result in the decision to change offensive play calling in any way? (Jeff McLane)

Nick Sirianni: No.

Q. QB Jalen Hurts is typically a very good deep ball thrower. We’ve seen him overthrow two passes in back-to-back games, his first interception of the season. I know everybody needs to get better, but how would you assess just Jalen’s play these past couple of weeks? (Ed Kracz)

Nick Sirianni: When the ball goes further and further down the field, you’re not going to be a hundred percent on those. And there’s different reasons, again, for why a ball is missed. It’s never just on one person, it’s just not this game, but Jalen’s throwing of the deep ball– we chart everything, right? Where he is in his intermediate accuracy, where he is on his deep ball accuracy. I don’t know if that’s a fair question in seeing how all these balls that he’s putting in great spots that have resulted. The throw to [WR] A.J. [Brown] on the vertical ball early in the game down their sideline. Whether it’s the deep ball to [WR DeVonta Smith] Smitty last week or the deep ball to [WR] Jahan [Dotson] that didn’t go our way with the review. He’s made so many good throws like that.

Okay, so then there’s two that you perceive that are not where they’re supposed to be. That’s football. He’s made a ton, a ton of throws. And again, there’s always different reasons within it. I’m not going to sit up here and say it’s this or it’s that of what happened on the play. You’re always going to come out of a football game wanting a play back as coaches, as players, everybody. But I think his deep ball accuracy is one of the better deep ball accuracies in the league, which is why I kind of pushed back on that question there.

Q. You’ve talked about having conversations with players at all times throughout the week. Just this weekend, players like T Lane Johnson and QB Jalen Hurts and others have talked about this offense and getting it back in rhythm. What has this weekend been like? How productive are those conversations, if you’ve had them? (Brooks Kubena)

Nick Sirianni: This weekend was about one, to look through everything like we would on a bye-week. We feel like we’ve had a good process to go through on that. So, we were able to do some of that, not necessarily all of it, but also it was important that guys got away and had some time away as well. I won’t ever get into any conversations that I have with the guys, but I always value those conversations that we have together.

That’s what I believe that we have as a team, looking for solutions and not assigning blame. That’s huge to be able to have that, because when you’re worried about blaming someone, then you’re not going to get better yourself. That’s the mindset that this team has, and you value that because of the leaders that you have like Lane, like Jalen, that they’re constantly working on everything they can do to get better. That’s what we’re trying to do as coaches, as players, as a team.

Q. You mentioned T Lane Johnson. We know how much respect you have for him. When he mentions ‘predictable’ when it comes to the offense, not to assign blame as you said, but is that something you saw? Or is that something you’re trying to correct? Or does that hold more weight when he says it? (John McMullen)

Nick Sirianni: I listened to that response, too, and I think that he said a lot of things there. He talked about predictability. We talk about predictability when you’re behind the sticks. He also talked about execution. Again, when I listened to Lane’s explanation of it, I felt a lot like he was thinking about anything he could do to get better, and that’s how I felt and that’s how I took it. But you never want to be predictable, obviously. As you look at teams, it’s like, ‘How do we make this team one dimensional so we can make them predictable in the pass game?’ It’s usually how that goes down.

That’s what we’ve been talking about. Back to the first question, how do we be more efficient on first and second down, so we don’t have that predictability? That’s what defenses are trying to do, is trying to make you one dimensional so they can play and sell out to a certain thing. Whether that’s predictability in our run game, whether that’s predictability in our pass game, whatever it is, it starts with run-pass, stuff like that.

But we’re constantly working on that. We’re constantly thinking things through about that. Obviously, those were big part of the discussion because our job as coaches is to put them in the best positions they can be in to succeed, and then obviously, the player’s job is to go execute. We all know we need to do that at a higher level offensively, defensively, coaches, players, everything.

Q. When you guys drafted LB Jihaad Campbell, you kind of left it open-ended. Is he an edge? You don’t want to stereotype where he was, an edge or a middle guy, inside guy. LB Nakobe Dean is back now. I guess he wasn’t ready to go full board last week. Can you see a scenario? I mean, I would think last year, Nakobe was one of your best 11 defensive players. Can you see that scenario where he is back in the middle, and you can use Jihaad in different ways? (Bob Brookover)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, I think that we have a lot of versatility there and that we have a really good linebacker room altogether. We look at everything. We look at everything that we can do to help our team be as successful as we possibly can. So again, we’ll see. I’m not going to talk through some of those things, obviously. I think you guys respect that with not giving opponents any information or anything like that.

But really excited about the room. Excited to get Nakobe back in there rolling because we know the type of player he is. And Jihaad’s played really well, and [LB] Zack Baun’s played really well, and [LB Jeremiah] Trott[er Jr.]’s done an unbelievable job on special teams. He made an unbelievable tackle in the game the other day at the 20-yard line on kickoff. And [LB] Smael [Mondon]’s done a nice job as well. So, really excited about that group and the things that they bring, both defensively and special teams-wise.