Nick Sirianni

Q. Did you want to bring former Eagles CB Isaiah Rodgers back? (Jeff McLane)

Nick Sirianni: Obviously, when you have the success that we were able to have last year, it’s hard to say bye to guys. It’s always hard to say bye to guys, but that’s the reality of this business, that guys’ contracts are up. You can only get so many of them back, and that’s what makes this league so great, the parody within this league. When you go through special things with them, you have a connection with all the guys. You hate to see any of them leave.

Q. So, that’s a yes. (Jeff McLane)

Nick Sirianni: You got what I said.

Q. How do you think CB Isaiah Rodgers is playing out there? (John McMullen)

Nick Sirianni: I think as we watch tape on him, I see he’s doing some really good things. We will have to be aware of where he is on the football field, on special teams and also on defense, because he has a knack for the football.

Q. I heard a couple guys say that the focus is on doing their job and not worrying about anybody else’s. Is that coming from you? And if so, why is that an important message? (Tim McManus)

Nick Sirianni: For any of us to succeed in our job, we have to worry about ourselves and not focus on other things. That’s something we always talk about is [that] there are a lot of outside distractions. There are distractions, and that could be with successes, that could be with failures. If you let yourself get into things that you can’t control or aren’t important, one or the other or both, then all you’re doing is limiting yourself at playing the best football or coaching your best football that you can. I think that’s just really important for all of us to [do], is lock in and focus on what we have to do because it’s within. You guys have heard me say this a million times, it’s within the process of your week that puts you in a state to play a good game and get you ready to play a good game. I love that because I think that’s always been our mindset here.

Q. If there is a decision in a game to effectively bench someone, right, to pull somebody, how do you decide that’s the time? And when I say a young player, how do you know that you’ll be able to get that guy back at some point? (Zach Berman)

Nick Sirianni: There’s a lot of things in my seat that there’s– I have a thousand to-do lists and, ‘Hey, if this happens–‘ whether it’s offensive football, whether it’s head coaching stuff, whether it’s special teams, defense situations, ‘If this happens, you do this or if that happens.’ But there are also a lot of things that there isn’t a handbook on. You try to think through literally everything you can to have a plan. Plans can go different ways. You can take this road; you can take that road. Everything’s a little bit different.

I can’t tell you I have a handbook for that. Like I said, every scenario is a little bit different, but I do know this, that you need everybody on the football team to accomplish your goals. Guys constantly go through ups and downs. Coaches constantly go through ups and downs throughout the season. So again, it always goes back to [if] you [can] have that dog mentality, that dog mindset, that mindset to just be in the moment, continue to get better. When I say get better, it’s identifying issues, it’s identifying things that are going well and then just putting your head down and getting better through the work. Knowing that, regardless of who that is, you’ll need all the guys throughout the course of a season.

Q. When you do face adversity as a team, what are some signs you look for during the week to get an idea that things are going to get better? (Dave Zangaro)

Nick Sirianni: How the work’s going, how practice is going, because we can all have different things on our minds, and we’re all going to have different things on our minds, but when you get in and you’re in the moment of practice and you’re in the moment of meetings and walkthrough, do you sense that we’re completely locked in and busting our [butt] to get as good as we possibly can? That’s the same thing in coaches’ meetings as well.

That’s why that mindset’s so important to be able to eliminate things that could distract you from your goal. Whether that is the adversity that you’re going through or outside noise or inside noise, whatever it might be, is eliminating those distractions to focus completely on what you need to do and a task at hand.

Q. What happened in that respect this week? (Tim McManus)

Nick Sirianni: I feel like we’ve had two really good practices. I felt like Monday’s meeting where we came in and watched the tape was really locked in, focused. Felt great energy all week. This is the reality of NFL football. You’re going to have ups and you’re going to have downs. There hasn’t been a team to win them all since ’72. This is the reality of it.

I remember talking to [WR] DeVonta [Smith] when he first got here, and we had that law at the beginning of the season and it’s like, ‘Hey, you won almost every game when you were at Alabama. That’s how I felt like when I was at Mount Union, but that’s not [the] reality of this sport.’ There are really good players and really good teams all over the place. Any game, if the ball bounces a certain way and you don’t play the way you’re capable of playing, you can lose. It is just the reality of this business, and our job is to do everything we can do in the week to prep ourselves [and] to put ourselves in the best position to play our best and win that football game.

Q. Do you view it the getting back on track mostly as, ‘We need to work sharper, we need to work better, we need to get back to kind of these emotional intangible things,’ you seem to be talking about as opposed to a change in strategy on offense or defense? (Mike Sielski)

Nick Sirianni: I don’t think that the answer has to be one or the other, right? I think that the answer is yes to both. We’ve got to continue to get better in all cases. That’s what you’re doing throughout the course of a year. To say it’s just one or the other, it is football, so it’s going to be those things the entire year. You’re constantly trying to figure out what you do well, how you scheme it, your work process, because all of those things change throughout the year. Obviously, things that you do well might change as the year goes on, as teams plan for that. Then as you’re tired and the dog days of an NFL football season being locked in and being sharp– but I will say this, we talk about detail an awful lot, and you’re trying to play and coach and you’re holding it to the highest standard of our detail every single week and every single practice, but there’s naturally going to be mistakes.

This is a constant quest for growth because you always can get better. That’s my message to these guys as well, is we’re going to make mistakes in this game. It’s about having the mindset of, ‘Alright, they happen, let’s go out and play the next play and let’s go out and coach the next play.’ That’s what puts you in the state of mind to make the next play and coach the next play. Detail will always be there, and then the other ones, it just depends on the week and how you go, but we’re always focused on everybody: coaches, players. Everybody putting their head down, working, identifying issues, identifying things that are working for you, and getting better.