Nick Sirianni

Q. Aside from what he can do on the field, obviously, RB Saquon Barkley, what would his return mean for the morale, do you think, of the offense and for the team in general? (Ed Kracz)

Nick Sirianni: Obviously, Saquon’s a phenomenal football player, phenomenal leader, captain. I mean, they voted him captain, his teammates. So, anytime you have an opportunity to get someone like him back on the field, that’s huge. We’ll see where we are as the week progresses, but looking forward to seeing him out there today. We’ll see where we are at the end of it. Can’t say enough good things. You guys know how I feel about Saquon. I can’t say enough good things about him.

Q. Sticking with RB Saquon Barkley, whenever he does return to game action, how much does just the threat of his presence, how much will that help QB Tanner McKee in the play action pass game? (Krystle Rich)

Nick Sirianni: Your play action pass game gets better and better as you run the football better. We know we have to play not only complimentary football offensively, defensively, special teams, but also within the offense. For your play action game to create the plays that you want it to create, your run game’s got to be going. You’ve got to be converting on third downs. You’ve got to be in manageable situations to continue to get reps and plays out there. Anytime you add a player like Saquon’s caliber to your team, that’s obviously a huge plus. I like the backs in the room that we have. Obviously, we’ve been beat up there as the season’s [gone on], and I’m glad we’ve had the guys that we’ve had to be able to step in and go. We’ll see where we are with Saquon, but anytime that’s a possibility, that’s huge.

Q. How much do you expect QB Jalen Hurts to be around the team the rest of the year and how much can that help him and the rest of the team? (Dave Zangaro)

Nick Sirianni: We’ll see. Everybody’s a little bit different in their recoveries with their meetings and where they are, and we’ll see. I think that’s fluid, and we’ll see where that is as we continue on through this.

Q. Has he been here this week? (Tim McManus)

Nick Sirianni: Again, I’m not going to put any of that business out there. As I’ve told you guys, I miss Jalen, miss being around him on a daily basis, and everyone goes through the timetable in a certain amount of time.

Q. The $250,000 fine, did the NFL specify, was that for a specific instance in-game or is that just more general? (Tim McManus)

Nick Sirianni: I won’t get into my conversations with the league. I try to keep everything player related, as far as my conversations with players, in-house. Not try, I do. Same with conversations with the league, same with conversations with the referee’s association. I’ll just keep that at that.

Q. How do you feel you have been with the referees though throughout your time? Has it changed at all? (Dave Zangaro)

Nick Sirianni: Man, what do you think? [Jokingly.]

Q. Do you want my answer? (Dave Zangaro)

Nick Sirianni: No. [Laughing.] No, actually, everything — You are in constant growth. I truly believe that I’ve been in constant growth there in maturity in every phase. You’re trying to get better as a coach on a daily basis. I’m always trying to get better as a human being, as a Christian, as a father, as a husband, as a son on a daily basis. I know that things don’t happen overnight, and there are times where you ‘relapse,’ to say, and you have a moment that you want back. But I can truly see growth, and that happens because, again, my faith. That happens, again, because of the people I have around me. I want to continue to grow as a person and as a coach, but that doesn’t mean we’re perfect. We all fall and it’s about how you get back up.

Q. How much do you think it’ll help QB Tanner McKee to have a full week, full complement of reps and meetings and everything as the one? And as he banks reps throughout the weeks, how much improvement do you expect to see? (Reuben Frank)

Nick Sirianni: Tanner loves football. He’s highly intelligent, [has a high] football IQ and [is] tough. Like I’ve said to you guys in the past, those guys, God willing, have a tendency to reach their ceiling. To put in the work that you need to put in to get [there], you’ve got to love this game. I have no doubt in my mind that Tanner will do those things. Because of that, because of the intangibles that he has, [he] will continue to rise and reach his ceiling. And that’s been my experience with guys like Tanner. That’s why it’s so important that when you go through the process of bringing guys in here, you look at all those things.

It always helps a quarterback. We’ve seen quarterbacks throughout the NFL, like, ‘Man, that guy seems to be playing better and better as he gets older,’ and maybe his talents are diminishing, but his mind is strengthening. It’s like, ‘Man, that guy continues to play at a high level.’ I think you see that all the time and every rep counts and every rep matters.

Q. As you’re evaluating how this offensive operation is going, how are you isolating the core foundational beliefs that you’re trying to implement for the season against some of the adjustments you’re doing given your personnel? (Brooks Kubena)

Nick Sirianni: Your job is to go out and to try to win every game the best way that you can. Yes, you want to have a system in place to be the bones of your operation, but while also understanding that you want to attack the defense of what they’re playing and with the strengths of your players. That’s always a fine line. We know we have good players that can execute a lot of different things, but ultimately, it always is players over plays. It will always be players over plays. We have good players and have had good players that can execute a wide variety of schemes. To answer your question, again, it’s always players over plays, and it’s always, do what you need to do to win each and every game, [which] we haven’t been able to the last couple of weeks, and we need to get back on track.

Q. When you’re in a situation like you’re in like you guys are in now, and you’re the head coach and a team’s lost four games in a row and you’re dealing with stuff with QB Jalen Hurts and all the stuff that you want to keep in-house, are there parts of the job that still that you enjoy? Are you in it? You know what I mean? You didn’t look like you were enjoying yourself very much the other day, and you’re dealing with a lot here within the team. (Mike Sielski)

Nick Sirianni: Hell yeah, I enjoy it. I hate losing. I hate it. There are moments where you’re, man — but I love everything about this game. I love coaching young men to be the best football players they can be, to understand football better, to help them become men, to help them become better men. There are things you can control, and sometimes there’s things that you can’t control. I know I can always control my attitude, my effort, my energy. To me, that’s mental toughness. I don’t have to go out there and be physically tough anymore, personally, but mental toughness is obviously really important and really important to me.

Sometimes you can give yourself that grace of — It’s hard when you have kids, man. They want all your time and your attention when you get home after a loss, and you’ve got to give them that attention. You’ve got to be able to do that. I’m not saying I’m perfect at that. I imagine if you interviewed my kids, they’d probably say the same thing. But you have that grace time where you have some time to really watch the game, think about the game, you’re going to feel upset about the game. Then, it’s got to be about getting better from that tape. What happens with me is I have those moments after tough times where we’re human, where you’re down. Then once you get back into this process of this thing, it’s like something for me has always snapped and said, ‘Boom, I’m back into this process of doing what I love to do.’ You get lost in that process and you get, ‘Man, we can attack this way. I can talk to the team about this. Let me do some research on that.’ Your mind flows away from it.

It’s the basketball player that goes through a dribbling routine where it’s all chaotic around him, and he can focus on the dribbles and focus on the process so he can focus on making the shot. That’s always been my experience. I definitely feel like I’ve grown in the sense of handling the ups and downs better and the development of me as a person. What’s stayed consistent is win, lose, draw, you get lost in that process. By the time you get to this particular moment, and the players are back in and looking to you, you’ve got the same energy, attitude and effort regardless of the circumstances.

Q. What’s the plan with TE Zach Ertz going forward? (Zach Berman)

Nick Sirianni: Zach’s obviously still here. He’s out of elevations at this particular time. I think Zach’s been having really good practices, and we’ll see. Again, just like there’s things that you can’t predict, but I love having Zach on this football team, and we’ll see as the season progresses. When he’s been in with the ones, he’s had great reps. When he’s been in with the scout team, he’s given our defense great looks, phenomenal looks because of the player he is and the teammate that he is.

Q. The NFLPA called for a thorough investigation into the handling of QB Jalen Hurts over the diagnosis of his blood clots. Do you agree with that? (Jeff McLane)

Nick Sirianni: Guys, I’m not going to go into any of that. I respect your question. Obviously, I understand that everybody has questions about this, and I care deeply about Jalen and I want — his wellbeing is first and foremost, but really, I’m here to talk about the Cowboys and our team in this week of practice.

Q. How do you play a team like Dallas, their defense is run by Cowboys Defensive Coordinator Christian Parker, who was so involved in the day-to-day football stuff here. As an offense, I guess, how do you attack that? How do you kind of change things up when you’re playing against somebody who is familiar with, I guess, the core of how things work? (Jason Dumas)

Nick Sirianni: That’s a really good question. I think that with the amount of tape — Now, when you know somebody and you’ve been in the building, obviously, you have a little bit more, you’ve got more insight. Now, Christian wasn’t sitting in offensive meetings with us, right? He was busy doing his own job and he did a phenomenal — The reason he’s the defensive coordinator for the Dallas Cowboys is because of the job he did for the Philadelphia Eagles. I love Christian. I miss him, and he is a hell of a football coach.

With that being said, we have so much film available to us that when he’s — Again, Christian wasn’t in our offensive meetings. Now, there’s things that he knows of what we preach and this and that, but this is really week to week in the NFL because of the amount of film that we have on each other. You can go back and study a defensive coordinator. Now, I can’t study Christian hasn’t been a defensive coordinator ’til this year, but I could go back. If we were playing [Defensive Coordinator] Vic [Fangio], I could go back to 2019 when we played Denver in Indy, and watch that game and look at what he did in this situation or that situation. So, with that obviously comes great knowledge from the coordinators and the defenses or the offenses of the things that you’re doing and what they see.

It’s our job as coaches to always put a seed of doubt in their minds. ‘Hey, I know this play’s coming in this situation on that play,’ and how do we put a seed of doubt in their minds in those scenarios? With that, it’s like, sometimes you look at it and it’s like, ‘Man, coach told me that when this happens, when that formation happens in this situation, that this happened and they did this instead. I ain’t listening to my coach on that anymore.’ That’s our job as coaches to be able to put that seed of doubt in the player’s mind that what you watched on film isn’t exactly what’s going to happen because this is a new week.