Nick Sirianni

Q. Nick, you’ve been pretty lucky with weather. On a day like today, do you change anything or emphasize anything differently? (Dave Zangaro)

NICK SIRIANNI: No, it’ll be good work for us to get the weather as far as just our handling of the football in practice, which we anticipate in the Northeast we’ll have some bad weather games here and there.

It’ll be good for us to practice that today. Nothing has changed. I assume if it goes into lightning – which I’ll have to get off the field for – or torrential downpour we might have to change a little bit. But this is good for us to get some work.

Q. How is Eagles OL Tyler Steen? (Brooks Kubena)

NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, he’s working to get back.

Q. When it comes to evaluation of players, how difficult is it to sort of address the preseason games when you’re talking about competition level from start of the game to second half? (John McMullen)

NICK SIRIANNI: Say that one more time. I’m sorry.

Q. When it comes to evaluation of players, how difficult does it make it for you and the coaches when you have to take in the fact the changing lineups — (John McMullen)

NICK SIRIANNI: You know, again, everything is evaluated from what they do in practice to what they do in the game. Obviously the talent level, everybody is good when you get to this point.

But I hear you. You take everything into account. Obviously we take that into account as well. We feel like we have so many reps that we’ve gotten at practice and in the game. The game is just another tool for us to evaluate players. Like I said, everything is taken into account.

Q. After watching the tape, who popped that you might not have appreciated during the game? (Bo Wulf)

NICK SIRIANNI: I thought the guys played hard and physical. Again, as far as defense goes, we had one missed tackle against Baltimore. I think we had four, two on the same play, against New England, which is still — you’re going to have missed tackles, but thought we tackled well. I know I’m saying the four missed ones, but there are also a lot of plays that happen during a game. So, again, we hit our percentage of what we wanted to do. Defense tackled well, defense pursued to the football well, so I’d say that as a whole, on defense we played with good fundamentals.

On offense some really nice combination blocks that set off some good runs on gap scheme plays. Tyler Steen had one in particular that he was combo-ing with [Eagles C/G] Dylan [McMahon] that I really thought was nice.

[Eagles OL] Nick [Gates] had one also I think with Dylan on a similar play that was a really good combination block. I thought we blocked well, caught the ball well. Only had one drop in the game. So we played to our culture as far as our detail, as far as what we want — our effort and our fundamentals, so I thought that was a positive when you’re doing that.

The other thing that you saw, again, you’re trying to evaluate — every time you go out there you’re trying to get better at your fundamentals, your detail, your culture, right? The outcome is not always in your control. There are different things that kind of affect that at times.

But I really liked how our guys were connecting on the sideline as far as being there for each other. Someone sent me a clip of [Eagles WR] A.J. [Brown], [Eagles WR] DeVonta [Smith], [Eagles S] Chauncey [Gardner-Johnson], [Eagles DT] Jalen Carter, and [Eagles WR] Parris Campbell going crazy when [Eagles WR] Joe [Ngata] had a really nice catch on the sideline. Really nice play there. You love to see the energy and the guys being there for each other.

So I thought that was really cool. Some of the things as far as our culture goes from the game I thought went really well.

Q. How much of Eagles QB Kenny Pickett’s struggles were related to offensive line protection? (Jeff McLane)

NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, I mean, drives get killed by sacks, right? You know, as far as if you get sacked on second down, now you’re in a third-and-impossible [situation] a little bit, right? It’s not just the play of the protection, but the next play that could lead to how we play the next play, right? Like we had a second-and-22 that we had a good screen pass on.

So it’s not just— again, you’re put in different situations as far as what happens after a sack. This is the ultimate team game, so for the quarterback to be successful, the rest of the offensive line, the receivers, the backs, the tight ends, they have to do their job. And vice versa; for the receivers to be successful the quarterback has to.

That’s what I’m saying, it’s a team game. It’s about the team. It’s about the team. How everybody plays is dictated by how the other person plays. I would say some of his plays that you would want back happened on a couple of the breakdowns or the play after that.

Q. Has the so-called ‘tush push’ changed at all without former Eagles C Jason Kelce? (Ed Kracz)

NICK SIRIANNI: Again, Jason is one piece of that puzzle. [QB] Jalen [Hurts] is another huge piece of that puzzle. And then [Eagles G] Landon [Dickerson] and the guards will be a huge piece of that puzzle. And the offensive line, right?

And so you’re just getting reps with guys that haven’t got reps of it. So, we’ll see. We’ll see where that is. Obviously not giving any answers until we get out there and play a game.

We haven’t been successful with it, right? You’re seeing that it is a hard play. Like I’m glad they didn’t take it out of the game because it’s not just a gimme. It really shows you the talent of the guys that have been out there succeeding at that play for the past two and a half, three years, right?

And so I feel like that should give you an appreciation of how good we’ve done it in the past. We’ll see. We will continue to rep it, we’ll continue to walk through it. We’ll see if we practice it. That was a discussion this morning if we needed to practice it. We’ll go from there.

Q. In Eagles DB Cooper DeJean’s case, is the thought still for him to play corner and slot corner, or given the depth at safety, would you consider him there? (Zach Berman)

NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, we’ll see. We’ll see where he is as far as — you don’t ever want to overload a guy right at the beginning. Looking forward to watching him practice today and ramping it up a little bit even more today.

And then you got to take each guy as its own case. So, you look at the situation that the team has and then you also look at what the guy can do. So, time will tell, and look forward to seeing him go out there and roll today.

Q. Are you where you want to be in terms of kick return? (Jeff McLane)

NICK SIRIANNI: Obviously we all have work to continue to do there. You know, I don’t think — we’re not where we want to be in anything. We want to continue to grow in everything that we do. Kick return even more so because that’s such an unknown.

We gave up a big return, and we need work at it because every time we do it, we learn a little bit more about it. Like every time we take a rep our coaches learn a little bit more about it, our players learn a little bit more about it.

We’re actually starting a period today. It’s not on the script today as far as kickoff and kickoff return, but today we added a couple things in his practice to emphasize it while pads are on. We will do even more tomorrow to make sure we’re ready for it.

To say, ‘Are we where we want to be?’ Obviously not, because it’s such a new play. But we’re going to add some stuff today to practice that you’ll see and in the days leading forward to practices that you’ll see to ramp it up even more.

Q. There has been a lot of conversation around the number two quarterback job. What are the different factors you weigh? (Tim McManus)

NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, practice every day, walkthrough every day, classroom every day. Obviously you get — everyone gets to see, the entire league gets to see the game when it’s live and going.

And so there is just so much that goes into it, individual routes versus air, all those things are factored into when you’re evaluating, not just a quarterback, but every position.

I’m really pleased with our quarterback room. [Eagles QB] Jalen [Hurts] has had an unbelievable camp and he’s done an unbelievable job, but I really feel like we have two guys — I love the whole room. [Eagles QB] Will [Grier] got in and made some plays.

With [Eagles QB] Tanner [McKee] and [Eagles QB] Kenny [Pickett], I feel like that we have guys that a lot of teams would like to have and be in this situation where you have two guys that you feel really good about there in case they need to play. Hopefully they never need to play, right? That’s the plan.

And Will, like I said, went in for a series and he went down and showed what he could do. So really just excited about the entire room and really pumped that we have that group.

Q. Whenever you historically place a lot of value on the second quarterback, what is the conversation carrying three through the initial 53-man roster? (Brooks Kubena)

NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, the value of a backup quarterback, it’s all positions that you need depth at, right? Even more so at that position, because that person touches the ball every time there is a play.

We haven’t run a lot of Wildcat here in the past, so they touch the ball every single play. So, as far as how many you keep, you’ve seen how many we’ve kept the last couple years, but every year is a new year, every year is a different year, and we’ll see how it goes this year.

Q. What kind of stock do you place in the fact that Eagles QB Jalen Hurts hasn’t thrown an interception in the preseason? (Martin Frank)

NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, what I’ve seen is like that can go a couple different ways, right? That can go where he’s not taking risks, but I don’t see it that way. I see him pushing the ball down the field and taking the plays that are there, and when the play he wants is not there, he’s checking it down. So, he’s playing really good football.

And so that’s a product of him. He’s taking what the defense is giving him. That’s good quarterback play, right? Good quarterback play, the quarterback play I get so excited about is, ‘Hey, we have this shot on or we have this intermediate chunk on and they didn’t give it to you and then we take a checkdown for 10 yards.’ That’s awesome football.

That gets me more excited than sometimes the big wild plays. That’s just the development of a quarterback and making plays, and so that’s what he’s done.

I think he’s just had a great camp in that, of taking care of the football. We put so much emphasis on winning the turnover battle. I don’t know if you guys know, I went over this with the team the other day, but in the past three years – 2021, 2022, 2023 – when we’ve won the turnover battle, we’re 20-1. We were 6-1 in ’21; we were 10-0 in ’22; and I believe we were 4-0 last year, which that — ours are even higher than the league average as far as just the turnover battle.

And so we put so much emphasis on that, but you put so much emphasis on that without trying to — explosive plays are important as well. Jalen has just done a really nice job of delivering the football where it needs to go and making great decisions with the football.

Man, I couldn’t be more happy with where he is right now, and look forward to him having another good day tomorrow.

Q. Has your definition of an explosive play changed with Eagles offensive coordinator Kellen Moore? (Brooks Kubena)

NICK SIRIANNI: No.

Q. Where do you think Eagles LB Nakobe Dean is? Difficult rehab. What have you seen from him? (John McMullen)

NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, I think he’s had a nice camp. I’m excited about that linebacker group. We got some guys that haven’t played at all and some guys that are veterans, and I’m excited about that group. Nakobe played really well in the game.

[Eagles beat writer] Bo [Wulf], you asked me who played well. I thought Nakobe played a really good game. He was flying around to the ball. He had this play – first of all, just to talk about our core values, he had a detailed play on his tackle where he shot out and made a tackle on a screen.

That was awesome, right? His fundamentals of tackling. He just got the guy down. Not the prettiest way, just get the guy down. We talk a lot about our fundamentals of tackling. We are going to do a drill out here today to emphasize it again.

He just did an unbelievable job getting the guy down. Then he had a play where he blitzed, had the [running] back on him. Would like to have a better win there on that play, but then the play — we had a couple missed tackles on the play, and he’s four yards in the backfield and retraces and makes a really good tackle. Sometimes what happens on missed tackles is it turns into an explosive [play]. Well, that didn’t because of the relentless effort of Nakobe.

His fundamentals, his tackling, his block destruction, and his effort on his plays is really where you’re able to see his talent.