Nick Sirianni

Q. Hey Nick, you said after the game that you felt like you really needed to improve on explosives. When there’s something that specific that you want to work on, how do you go about doing that? (Reuben Frank)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, in practice, walkthrough and in meetings and prep for it. It’s always about the daily process and the weekly process to go about doing that. So we have to do our jobs as coaches to help put them in positions for that and then we have to execute when we have those opportunities.

Q. A lot of blitzing yesterday from Chiefs Defensive Coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, which I assume you’re always ready for, but that was even a little bit more based on his history. When you watched the film, how do you think it went? How do you think you guys handled it? (John McMullen)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, we were able to do some good things with it. I felt like in the run game we were able to handle some of the things where they were all over coming from different spots, this and that, and I thought [QB] Jalen [Hurts] did a really good job getting the ball out of his hand in those scenarios. Also against blitz zero he hit the big play to [WR DeVonta Smith] Smitty on that third down. Also there was a couple other ones that he got the ball out of his hands very quickly, our offensive line and our backs I thought sometimes when you’re in a protection — when you see a team bring one more than you can handle in certain situations, that’s what’s going to be important and you get the ball out of your hands and Jalen did a really good job of that.

Then the other thing there that was very obvious was you have one free runner sometimes, but sometimes when that happens, everyone else is one-on-one. I thought our guys did a really good job of keeping it firm. So Jalen just had to beat the free runner, right? That was our backs and our offensive line. It was both of them. Our offensive line did a really good job there of now the ball’s coming out quick on a lot of those, but they did a really good job of keeping it firm and the backs stepping up and protecting. I thought we made improvements on that from the week before, particularly with our backs. Obviously you’re always going to want to play back here, play back there, but I thought we did a really good job as far as picking that stuff up, throwing high, the whole operation I thought against when they brought one more than what we could protect.

Q. You addressed your offensive tendencies last week going into this week and pistol and under center, still 90% run and then shotgun overwhelmingly pass. Why do you think that was for a second week and is that something we’re going to mix up in the future? (Brooks Kubena)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, again, we don’t look at that in the sense of first, second, third down all throughout the game, right? You break that down by first down second and pass second and run you separate third down because that’s a different category. You separate 3rd-and-1 from 3rd-and-7+ or whatever it is because those numbers, if you look at them as a whole, they’re going to get skewed.

Now again, I haven’t looked at our self scout following last night yet. That’s something that’s a little bit later in our process for the week to make sure once the plan’s in then talking about that. But you can’t look at that number as a whole for it to tell the entire story. For instance, of course on the quarterback sneak play, we’re under center running the football.

So those numbers are going to get skewed in those areas. In two minute offense, you’re going to be in the gun a lot of times throwing the football. So again, you can’t look at them as here is the game and here is what those numbers say. You have to break it down. Your tendency is that what we do is break it down into situations. I’m not giving you guys anything really at the end of the day every coach does the same thing there in that manner. So we’re constantly looking at our self-scout. We’re constantly making sure that we’re not giving anything away to the defense. But there are times that you’re going to have tendencies. You do your best to put a seed of doubt into the defense’s mind to break tendencies, but a lot of good teams have tendencies, but that doesn’t mean you don’t fight like crazy to fight them and to again, put seeds of doubt in the defense’s mind of what you’re doing because you never want them to have a run-pass key.

When you look at the big picture as far as every play, that’s not how we look at it as coaches. And you kind of have to break it down a little bit further into it.

Q. I just want to ask you about the explosive plays again. It seemed like last year that was an area that seemed to get a little better as the season went on. Is it just something that needs time to breathe, for lack of a better term, something that needs to be worked on more and more as the season goes on, do you think? (Ed Kracz)

Nick Sirianni: I think that’s the case with everything, to be honest with you. It’s tackling, that’s block destruction, that’s taking care of the football, all those different things. This is no different. You get better as the season goes along and so does the defense though. So it’s all relative there. It is just you’re looking at, when you come off of a game, you look at what you did well, what you didn’t do well, right? I think we’ve been very efficient moving the ball forward as an offense. Now it’s hard to consistently inch your way down the field so you want to hit explosives, you have to hit explosives. That’s something, they come in all different shapes. So I say that with not the intent of giving anything away because I don’t think I will on that. Sometimes it’s over the top, sometimes it’s intermediate, sometimes it’s short, sometimes it’s in the run game, sometimes it’s in the screen game. There’s different reasons of why we had this many or why we had that many.

But we understand that to be what you want to be on offense, we have to be more explosive. It starts with us as coaches, putting them in positions to succeed different ways and then obviously the players always have to go out and execute. I trust our players fully because I know we got really good players. I trust our coaches fully. I know we got really good coaches, so that’s an element that we have to improve because you are always looking to win the explosive play battle. In the last two weeks. We haven’t won it, but we’ve protected the football. So again, we have to get better at that phase of our game. I have no doubt we have some great thoughts to be able to do that. Obviously won’t share those here. What I love about our team is we’re constantly in self-critical mode, open to everything and only for the attempts to get better, and that’s an area that we can get better at.

Q. Hey Nick, you’ve only had OLB Za’Darius Smith for one game, but he made an impact both on the field and also seemed like he brought a lot of energy on the sideline. What have been your impressions of him just in general over the past week and a half or so and what role do you hope to see him eventually play on this team? Both on the field and sort of off the field too? (Olivia Reiner)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, he’s really heavy handed, can win with power, can win with speed quick. It’s been fun being around him for a week. Looking forward to him continuing to develop his role on this football team. Time will still tell, I think. Yeah, I love his energy and he loves playing football. You love that about him. I think what you could really tell on the tape yesterday and you could tell on the field was how much energy we had as a football team. I always think that the energy you have as a football team are coming off the plays that you make, but it’s also you’re celebrating the success of your teammate and the team. I always look for that, what the energy looks like and whether it was a big play on defense, big play on offense, whatever it may have been. There was a lot of energy on that sideline because guys were genuinely happy for each other that they were making plays all for the team success and for the joy of their teammates, which was cool.

Q. When you guys promoted Kevin Patullo to offensive coordinator, one thing you and the players talked about was the excitement of continuity of him being in the building. Now that you’re a few games in, how have you seen the benefits of that continuity when it comes to the offense? (Eliot Shorr-Parks)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, just the knowledge of the players, the ability to have conversations and the connection he has with those guys. Again, communication is so key because you’re just constantly trying to work to get better and he’s got great open communication with all positions on offense. I think you see it in situational football, that might not be as obvious to you guys, but what we want to do in certain situations you’re way out in front of. That continuity in that aspect, knowing what the players do well, trying to emphasize what the players do well and finding a way to win, I guess what we’ve been able to do the last two weeks at times it hasn’t looked pretty altogether, but we found a way to win.

That’s the main goal and that’s a big key to that Eliot, is knowing your guys and knowing what they do and what we need in certain situations and what we need to do to win that game in that particular day. We found a way to do that. By no means are we a finished product, we need to keep getting better. Our goal is to keep getting better, play our best football by the end of the year and there’s steps to this. It’s a process and so I think that’s where it’s really shown.

Q. In light of TE Dallas Goedert’s absence, you used a lot of 12 personnel. What went into the thinking there and how’d you think TE Grant Calcaterra and TE Kylen Granson blocked? (Jeff McLane)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, I thought they did a good job. They both came out of the game, we thought they did their jobs and did their jobs well. Obviously the production wasn’t as high as maybe will be when Dallas is in the game, but they did their assignment and they did it well. Every game calls for a little bit of something different based off of, you always want to get your best guys in the game, but sometimes you want to get different looks on the defense based off of how they play. That’s what went into that a little bit yesterday.

Sometimes you get on the ball after you run a 12 personnel play and you’re on the ball again, and so you’re locked into another play there. Just the flow of the game, the way that kind of went. But I thought they did a good job, Jeff, and I think there’s a really good play of Kylen on the perimeter on that, a little swing pass to [RB] AJ Dillon where he really held his block in space for a long time and Grant was able to do that consistently throughout the game.

I thought there’s a play in the red zone where I know we’re talking about tight ends, but I’m talking about our fullback, [TE] Cam Latu has this hit on the slice play on the defensive end that really helped that run get us down to the one-yard line, which ultimately led to us scoring. It was good blocking all the way around there because IT muddy down there sometimes inside in the red zone. But I thought those guys as a whole did a good job. And I know you just asked offensively, but those guys did a really good job. Maybe Grant’s job on special teams was diminished a little bit with him taking an extra step up on offense yesterday. But Kylen played a heck of a game on special teams and so did Cam [Latu]. When guys are able to have an elevated role and they come in and they do their job, that gives you more and more confidence in them. It takes everybody, it takes everybody’s role. Kylen playing the type of game he did on special teams helped us win that football game. That’s why this is the greatest team sport there is. It takes everybody, offense, defense, special teams, practice squad guys, getting the guys ready, the whole building. That’s why I love this game so much.

Q. With the benefit of watching film, do you think there’s validity to the suggestion that you have early movement on the QB sneaks and either way, the fact that it’s become a discussion point, is it going to require some type of adjustment going forward? (Zach Berman)

Nick Sirianni: I think that the one clip I saw of it was slowed down so much that I’m not sure you can see that to the naked eye. I mean, it was slowed down so much, and I get how we can manipulate things and show things like that, but it was slowed down so much it was like [slow forward moving gesture] right, but we understand that we have to be perfect on that play and we’ll keep working on being perfect on that play because obviously someone shared that clip with me and it’s like, but again, can you see that in the naked eye, right? Well, there’s things they do too on defense that sometimes you can’t see to the naked eye all the time, or the refs can’t see it also in that time to the naked eye. You could do that with a lot of plays on football and slow it down.

The referees have a hard job. They have to make split second decisions that are happening at this [fast] speed. You see that sometimes with pass interference too. They slow it down where it’s really slow with the remote. You’re like, well, yeah, this one you can see that it might be on this. We know we have to be perfect in that setting and we will work to get even better at the play and better with our timing. I have no doubt that we have the right guys to be able to do it and we will.

Q. Could you ever imagine that when you first started running the tush push that it would become what it’s become? I mean, this weekend it’s become the conversation people are talking about. Maybe you couldn’t even won the game of, you didn’t have the tush push. And do you see teams trying to do different things? I mean, they lined up offsides. We saw Washington get frustrated last year and do you worry about injuries at all in the whole thing? (Bob Brookover)

Nick Sirianni: Well, there hasn’t been any injuries yet. We feel like when they, there’s a lot of times they take space with the kickoff, they took the space out of the play to make it safer. Well, this is as tight as you possibly can be on a play here with the quarterback sneak. But yeah, I mean I think it’s an exciting play. I mean obviously there’s been a lot of discussion about it and I think when you bring more discussion about a play, it brings more attention to football. I think it’s kind of a cool thing obviously that how much people debate it, how much people discuss it.

I’d be confident too in some of our other plays to run in that area on those situations. But this play has been working well for us, so you keep going back to it, but there’s alternatives too for us to be able to run that I think we’d be successful with because of the resources that we put into our offensive line and our quarterback and the guys that are making the play go. I always think there’s a beauty when everyone knows what you’re going to run and isn’t that football? They know exactly what’s coming and they either can stop it or can’t stop it and it’s about the guys out there, like the physicality of the play and the toughness of the play. The Chiefs did a good job with it yesterday. They made it really hard on us yesterday. I think it brings good attention to the game and obviously I’m biased towards it and we will just keep working to get better at it.

Q. Coach. You’ve always talked about how you want to develop good habits, you want your players to have good habits. Is the conservative play calling these first two games a way? Is it part of the process of developing good habits and not turning the ball over? Obviously you have not turned the ball over and you won both games. (Al Thompson)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, it’s always going to come down to the ball. The team that wins the turnover battle a lot of times wins the game. I mean, it’s one of the highest stats there is out there. We take a lot of pride in how we protect it. We take a lot of pride in how we take it away, whether that’s how we catch it or how we strip at it or the attempts that we get on them, on the ball and sometimes on offense, it’s not real sexy to be like, but it’s the consistency of taking care of the football on a play to play basis there. That consistency is huge in football. That’s something we talk about an awful lot. We drill an awful lot. There’s not a meeting that doesn’t go by where we are not showing something from that and the guys go out and execute it and they put a lot of pride into it. Yeah we feel like it’s always coming down to the ball and that’s why we preach it so much. But again, conservative, however you said that different games call for different plays to be run and then also the way the defense plays dictates sometimes there and so you are never trying to be risk adverse because you still have to create explosive plays and that’s where an area that we have to get better at.

Q. Nick, just as a smack talk appreciator, what did you make of QB Jalen Hurts response to Kansas City Chiefs DT Chris Jones at the end of the game? (Bo Wulf)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, I don’t know, guys say stuff back and forth to each other on the field all the time. I don’t try to get too involved in that.