Nick Sirianni

Q. Obviously it’s been a pretty drama-filled week, at least early on. I’m curious, now that you’ve had a full week with the team, how do you think they responded to it? (Eliot Shorr-Parks)

NICK SIRIANNI: I think the last time we thought about that was Wednesday when you guys asked us the questions. We addressed it, and I said what I said. Really since then, it’s been a non-issue. And we have had a really good week of practice, and great meetings, and great walk-throughs.

Yeah, we moved on pretty quick from that. I think that’s a good sign of a good team.

Q. QB Jalen Hurts said on Wednesday that there are times he sees himself holding the ball too long. What can be done to help him improve in that regard? (Jeff McLane)

NICK SIRIANNI: I have no doubt in my mind that [QB] Jalen Hurts will continually get better at things that he perceives as something that’s going on or we perceive as something that is going on. He just continues to get better and win football games, which is – at the end of the day, the main thing is to win football games. And Jalen does it at a better clip than pretty much everybody else.

Again, things we do to put together the game plan, ways he goes through his reads, practice time, walk-through time, all those things will contribute to him getting better at what he talked about.

Q. When did you start playing celebrations for the team in meetings on Mondays? (Dave Zangaro)

NICK SIRIANNI: One thing that I look at is other people’s cultures, and I’ve done a lot of the studying of that. I was really interested in [Golden State Warriors Head Coach] Steve Kerr’s, and one of the things he talked about in his culture that I’ve read about – and I’ve never got a chance to talk to him but would love to talk to him – was just joy.

One thing I read: he made it a point of putting up pictures of the guys in the building, of that current team celebrating and really talking about their core values.

You guys don’t get to go around this whole building, but there are a ton of pictures and video boards of our guys doing those things. That’s inspired by Coach Kerr there. So we’ve had that with the video boards – you see those in the locker room – and the pictures.

We started at the beginning of this year, showing some of the celebrations there when we recap the game. It’s a little quick highlight video of the guys talking and showing our culture. Our tough, detailed, together culture.

We like to point those things out. Just like we like to point out things from the game, whether mistakes or good things, and how we go over that, we thought that it would be good to do that same thing with culture points. Just the same way you go over game details.

Because your culture is just as important as the things happening out there, and they’re a result of the things that happen out there. So the celebration thing started this year as far as that goes.

Q. The Steelers are No. 1 in takeaways. What is it that they do so well in that respect, and what becomes key for you guys? (Tim McManus)

NICK SIRIANNI: [Steelers LB T.J. Watt] No. 90. No. 90 is outstanding. You can see how he plays and the ability he has to get the quarterback, and retrace to the quarterback, and always have that ball on his mind.

My experience has been when you have a guy that’s a ball hawk like him, that goes throughout. And [Steelers S] Minkah Fitzpatrick is too on the back end.

Those guys get an opportunity to learn from him, so you can see [Steelers LB Nick] Herbig playing that way, [Steelers LB Alex] Highsmith playing that way. So they do a really good job getting after the quarterback and having the ball on their mind when that happens.

So we have to counter that, and we have different ways we’ll need to do that. We’ll have to play a good game because they’re good players.

I think I’ve said this earlier in the week – you can tell that it’s part of their culture. You can tell [Steelers Head] Coach [Mike] Tomlin talks about it a lot. I guess you get to see it a little bit in the episodes of Hard Knocks when he talks about it. That’s an advantage that you get to see some of those things.

But [I’ve] got a lot of respect for Coach Tomlin and his staff and how consistent he’s been throughout his entire career. It’s very impressive. That doesn’t happen without good culture, good players, good coaches.

Q. As someone who has never had a losing season, what appreciation do you have for 18 years without one? (Zach Berman)

NICK SIRIANNI: Man, 18 years. Four years, 18 years, obviously a big, big difference. Consistency and teams that are able to sustain success, I think that’s so impressive. You see it in this league all the time. Hey, this team came out of nowhere, had a big year, and don’t have another good year. Or whatever it is, right?

And I think that you get that appreciation when you have been a part of something. Being at Mount Union and the sustained success of Mount Union always taught me, ‘No, I’m going to root for teams like that’ when I was younger.

Everyone when I was growing up hated the Yankees because they won all the time. Or they hated Mount Union because they won all the time.

I think being a part of that, I ended up admiring that and not rooting against those teams. Until obviously you get into the here and you don’t root for one team or the other.

It just taught me [to] admire the success and sustained success because that is a difficult, difficult thing. Especially in this league, especially the way the rules are written up, and how the draft status goes, and the way the schedule goes.

This is a hard business to have sustained success [in]. So, man, I can’t say enough. Any time I’ve ever had a conversation with Coach Tomlin, admire the heck out of him. Can see his passion for the game and how he coaches. You get to watch it on television.

And then you get to see the sustained success and how his teams play football. You can tell his teams play football tough. They take care of the ball. They take the ball away. The fundamentals, the details.

So I always admire that.

Q. The Steelers are also first in time of possession margin. Paired with how good they are at taking away the ball, how much has that been part of the conversation this week as you’re trying to fix the passing game? They can punish you for mistakes and also take time off the clock in a lot of ways that maybe last week’s team didn’t. (Brooks Kubena)

NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, again, I go back to ‘fix’ the passing game. We’re trying to get better there. I don’t see it as broken. We’ve got the right players in place. We’ve got the right coaches in place. We’re going to keep getting better there.

Everything is accounted for. We talk about the ball each week. The ball is completely on our minds. We know it’s important to them. It’s always been important to us. We know that’s going to be a big emphasis on both sides this week and a big determinant of who is going to win the game.

There are a lot of stats you can look at. There are so many different stats: this, that, boom, boom.

One of the ones that we pay attention to a lot that has stood the test of time is the turnover differential. So that will be on our mind and, and I know it’ll be on their mind as well.