Nick Sirianni

Q. Before you get peppered probably with some DE Brandon Graham questions, I wanted to ask you about this Giants matchup. I know typically, as you’ve told me before, you approach every game like it’s the same, that your guys’ process is boring, but it works. But when you play a team for a second time in three weeks and it’s a rival and they were chirping a little after, some rookies at that. Does that provide any source of motivation as you guys are going through the game plan? Is that in the back of your mind, just how that game played out during and after? (Jason Dumas)

Nick Sirianni: Every game, obviously, if we’re getting up more for one game than the other, then we’re not doing our job on a consistent basis. That’s why you try to keep that same boring mindset over, and over, and over, and over again regardless of the opponent, regardless of anything. So, it’s business as usual. I’ve said this before, it’s like, hey, if you need a little extra motivation and that doesn’t distract — it’s always about if it distracts you to put that extra motivation on you, then don’t use it. If it helps you, use it. Everybody’s a little bit different there. Our job is to go through the same process and there’s steps required to win. There’s steps required to be ready to play and it’s about those steps and that’s what we’ll be about. We know we got an opponent that beat us a week ago and our job is to get ready for every opponent the exact same way and we’ll be doing that this week.

Q. What’s it like having DE Brandon Graham back in the building? (Brooks Kubena)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, exciting. Obviously, his play speaks for itself. Great person to be around, great teammate and so really excited to have him back.

Q. Players on Sunday in the locker room we’re talking about if DE Brandon Graham was to come back with sort of energy, the juice, the leadership, all that stuff. Obviously, you guys signed a veteran in Former Eagles DE Za’Darius Smith after week one. Is that something you feel the room needed and is it lacking with Za’Darius gone? (Jeff Neiburg)

Nick Sirianni: I think we’ve been playing and practicing with a ton of high energy. I think that’s one thing I always admire about this team, just the will to win and the will to do the things required to win and get better. We’ve had some great intensity practices throughout training camp, throughout OTAs, into the season, but BG [DE Brandon Graham] always just adds to that and like I said, excited to have him back.

Q. How can the success of the pass game, particularly off play action, help the run game moving forward? (Jeff McLane)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, again, when things look similar and you have to be multiple there and play multiple, defensive linemen have to go from run stoppers to pass rushers and vice versa. So, there is a little bit of, the same thing with the linebacker, same thing with the secondary, so a little bit of a seed of doubt that you put in their minds with those things. That’s what you’re trying to constantly do and what we’ve been able to do in the past four years, we’re just looking to continue to grow on that.

Q. Is there anything you can share with us in terms of C Cam Jurgens’ injury? Is there any concern that it could be long-term? (Ed Kracz)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, we’ll how it goes. He’s always going to do everything he can do and our trainers, our doctors and our strength staff will do everything they can do to get him back going as soon as possible. We’ll see where we are. You’ll get the injury report later today, but we’ll see where we are as the week continues and where Cam is.

Q. What would you need to see from CB Jakorian Bennett this week to activate him and then give him a role? (Dave Zangaro)

Nick Sirianni: Everyone’s a little different, right? You got to see that he is ready. You got to see that he’s mentally ready. You have got to see that he’s physically ready. That looks different at different positions, and I can’t say, ‘Hey, here are the checklist marks that I’m looking for’. You take all the expert opinions that you have, you talk to the player to see how he’s feeling, and you make a decision at the end of the week off of that. So, because I’ve answered that question a lot and I know this is a different one. We’ve had practice doing it to go through this ‘Hey, here are the steps that we take here’. But again, everyone’s a little bit different so it’s not like I can’t answer exactly say this is what we’ve got to see. We just got to see how the week goes.

Q. Let’s say if C Cam Jurgens can’t play Sunday, you have pretty much a whole week with that possibility. What goes into deciding if he can’t play? Who would be his backup center? Let’s say you wanted to move G Landon Dickerson in from left guard to center. (Martin Frank)

Nick Sirianni: Sure. Just what’s the best, you’re constantly trying to think of what the best thing is for the football team. So, you know you have options because of the guys that we have there, with Landon, with everybody, you have options there. You want to keep continuity as much as you possibly can, but you also want to give yourself the best opportunity to win. So, all those things are weighed, how practice looks is weighed, how practice goes, and walkthroughs for that matter. But we got a lot of confidence in the guys that if [C] Cam [Jurgens] can’t go, we have a lot of confidence in the guys that would be filling that spot.

Q. RB Saquon Barkley said the run game issues are on him, he’s taking ownership for that after the game and other times. How can you help him in not trying to do too much when things maybe aren’t there for him? (Jeff McLane)

Nick Sirianni: This is team football; it’s on all of us. It’s on us coaches, players, and it’s never just on one person. So, that’s Saquon. He’s going to always take accountability, that’s why you love him and that’s why you respect him so much, is that he wants it to be on him. But in the actuality of football, it’s on all of us and it’s just about going through — I don’t sense at all that he is trying to do too much. It’s going through his pre-snap process and then after he gets the ball process of what he reads; just going through that and being meticulous with that. We all have to do a better job to get it going. We know that’s something that we always want to rely on. Other teams obviously know that’s something we want to always have the ability to be balanced. We’re working like crazy to figure it out and I think we’ve had some good thoughts here and now we got to go put it to work.

Q. When it comes to DE Brandon Graham in general, how much communication did you have with him? You mentioned he was thinking about it earlier in the season. Did you keep in contact? (John McMullen)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, I keep in contact with all our guys, all our players, whether they’re here or whether they’re not, retired or whatever. I do that with a lot of guys that I used to coach. Sometimes it’s through a text message. I can’t tell you how many times you’re watching tape and you’re seeing something that reminds you of one of your guys, or that you had in the past, or the guy that you have on your team currently. That’s the relationship part of it that you value and why some of us have gotten into this business for. You always go back and look at old tape, ‘hey, we could run this play. Hey, go back to three years ago and let’s put that up.’ So that’s not uncommon for me to have communication with [Former Eagles Center Jason] Kelce or [Former Eagles Defensive Tackle] Fletch[er] [Cox] or [DE Brandon Graham] BG about those, because as you watch tape, your mind thinks about the plays in the past because you can correlate things, like ‘Hey, this looks like this game where we played against this team here’. So, those happen quite a bit. Not necessarily about anything, just more, ‘Hey, thinking about you’, ‘Hey, remember you made this play’ or ‘How’s the family doing?’ So it would’ve been more like that over the past month.

Q. What gives you confidence that DE Brandon Graham can make an impact on the field despite not having played football since February? (Olivia Reiner)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, obviously we’re going to go to practice and build confidence in practice. It always gives me confidence in [Offensive Coordinator] Kevin [Patullo] calling a certain fourth down call where I say, ‘Hey, we’re going to go for it.’ We’ve obviously talked about that call going into it. What gives me confidence are the practice reps on it and the guys that are executing it. So it’s the same thing here. We will see how practice goes but have confidence in who BG is as a player and as a person. Like I said, we’ll see where he is by the end of this week and see what we got. But I got confidence in him just because he’s done it for so long and has recently done it. It wasn’t a couple of years ago, it was just last year where he played at a very high level.

Q. In WR DeVonta Smith’s case, does he take bigger hits than other players or was it because he’s on the lighter side? Also, is there something about whether it’s his route combination or the way he plays that puts him in positions for those hits? (Zach Berman)

Nick Sirianni: DeVonta is so tough, and he knows that. We talk a lot about, and I know he talked a lot about this in college, about finishing runs and finding ways to get ugly yards after the catch. He’s going to go look for those ugly runs and extra yards because of just his makeup, who he is and the toughness that he has. He, I think sometimes, I remember the Super Bowl in ‘22, our first third down, he catches a little shallow route and [New Orleans Saints S Justin] Reed comes over and just smokes him on the sideline and he hit him good. I don’t know if you remember, his feet were up over his head and Smitty just gets up fast. I think about that. There was also the game in ‘22 against the Cardinals where someone came over and just drilled him on a wide receiver screen and he pops up.

It just shows his toughness and then his ability to just keep getting back up. Sometimes you don’t want him to take those hits, there’s a time to go out of bounds, but he is always looking for the grimy, gritty yards. You try to show your physicality and your toughness many different ways, and I think there brings a lot of energy to guys when you see Smitty lower his shoulder and get those extra yards. I think about ‘23, we threw a little screen to him in ‘23 on third and 14 in the San Francisco game and he broke through three tackles and got a first down in it. We were struggling a little bit at the time, and it brought life. We didn’t win that game, but it brought life to everybody. I think that that’s what a big play can do, that’s what a great assist from a teammate can do, and that’s what great toughness shown on tape can do, because those are the things we talk about all the time is can just bring that energy to a football team. I think he consistently does that and he keeps getting up, he keeps fighting and he delivers. I know he gets hit sometimes like that, but he delivers a lot of blows as well.

Q. When it comes to somebody who retires, I’m sure there’s a sense of how that itch to play football never really goes away. So as a coach, how do you deduce the difference between someone who just has that itch and okay, this can actually be somebody’s come back? (Brooks Kubena)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, I think you only have a limited amount of time where you can come back, right? It is tough way down the road to be able to do that. You see we do whatever we can do to help the football team. We obviously feel like this is an opportunity to help the football team, fresh off of retirement and excited to have him back. As you guys ask the guys today, I imagine that’s going to be the pretty common denominator, just how pumped everyone is to see his face and have him here and to have him back.

Q. What have you seen from the progress and development of C/G Drew Kendall since he got here in April to now? (Ed Kracz)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, Drew’s a tough kid and very intelligent, very high football IQ. He just keeps getting better. He is working with great guys. He’s able to sit there with [C] Cam [Jurgens], a Pro Bowl player, and [G] Landon [Dickerson], [T] Lane [Johnson], [T] Jordan [Mailata], [G/T] Tyler [Steen] and [OL] Brett [Toth] for that matter and just soak up information. I think that’s what he continues to do. I think he has an ability to play with balance, power and great athleticism with tenacity. I’m really pumped about Drew and his development, and we will see how that continues to go. But I know he works really hard and God willing, he’ll reach his ceiling.