Nick Sirianni

Q. A bit of a simple question, but I’d imagine this time of year, a lot of thoughts are just going through your mind especially during the national anthem of game one, it’s just lot of perspective. How are you feeling heading into this season? Just in terms of your team, how far you’ve come personally, that type of stuff. (Jason Dumas)

Nick Sirianni: I think that we’ve had a good training camp. I think we had good OTAs. I think our habits are going in the right direction, and you focus on those things at every practice that we go through. We’re thinking about, how did we tackle? How did we take care of the football? How did we take it away? How did we catch it? How did we block?

You’re just looking for those to constantly be on the rise. I think when you practice with the intensity that our team practices with, you get that good-on-good work that we’ve gotten for so long; our good offensive line is going against our good defensive line. You have no choice but to get better. I feel good about that. Now we’ve got to go do it. We’ve got to let our habits take over in the game as coaches. We’ve got to let our habits take over in the game as players, but I feel good about where we are right now, and this will be a really good test against a really good opponent.

Q. Speaking of habits, I asked QB Jalen Hurts about how you’ve emphasized habits, and he said you’ve had a habit of saying, ‘Contribution over credit.’ Where did that originate and why was that something you wanted to get across? (Brooks Kubena)

Nick Sirianni: I think you’re just constantly trying to think of new ways to say the same thing differently. Maybe if I say, ‘You can’t be great without the greatness of others,’ for an entire year, maybe that feels repetitive. It’s just another way of saying that we’re looking for contributions from everybody, and you need everyone’s contribution.

At the end of the day, it’s the same thing as saying, ‘You can’t be great without the greatness of others,’ ‘Contribution over credit.’ If we get the contributions from everybody, that we talked about their roles, what they need to do, their elevated roles if they need to step into an elevated role, good things will happen. That only happens though with your habits of whether you are getting better every single day.

Q. Did G Landon Dickerson’s back injury happen between Sunday and Monday’s practice, or was that pre-existing? (Jeff McLane)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, I’m not going to get into when that happened or anything like that.

Q. Does the knee not being listed means that otherwise he has cleared? (Jeff McLane)

Nick Sirianni: We only list the things on the injury report that would limit them in practice.

Q. To follow up, are there certain positions where with those players you might have to talk to them more about that kind of individualized position? For instance, wide receiver, something like that, will you have to drive that point home more? (Mike Sielski)

Nick Sirianni: I think the most important thing that we do is to make sure that the job description is very clear in everything. I take a lot of pride that in here, they leave this team meeting and there’s no question of what’s required for me. I want them to play tough, detailed, together, and they know exactly what that vision looks like.

I’m assuming you’re asking me about the roles, the contribution, and that portion of it, and it’s the same thing there. For instance, it’s hard to say that one position is more emphasized than the other. Now, you’re just being honest with every person right there about what the expectation is, so there’s not a guess on it, right?

‘Hey, we’ve had this role in the past, we need you as a wide receiver.’ What we ask [WR] Darius Cooper is going to look a little bit different than when we ask [WR] A.J. Brown to do. But it’s just being upfront with that and say, ‘Coop [Darius Cooper], when you get your opportunities to touch the football, you’ve got to make it count. You’re going to have to do some of this dirty work that’s so necessary for a football team.’

Everybody’s explanation or job description is based off of them uniquely. I wouldn’t say I spend more time on one than the other. It’s just whatever it is for that person. Did I answer your question?

Q. I think. I mean look, wide receivers are going to judge themselves at some level by how often they get the ball thrown to them and how many catches they get, how does that factor in? (Mike Sielski)

Nick Sirianni: I think what you just said is important. I think what the outside world does sometimes is factor the person’s stats. I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in what everybody needs to do to help this football team win. When you get influenced by the outside world by what they think success is, or what they think is impactful for that position, that’s my point. Contribution. We need your contribution. I don’t need your contribution to have 27 catches in two games or whatever. I need your contribution to be this. That’s a team.

I think that it’s really important, too, that we don’t get caught up. Our job as a football team, as players, and as coaches, is to win every game. I’ve talked about this with Jalen. Jalen, I love how selfless he is. He’s been so efficient as a quarterback, taking care of the football, efficiently going where the right place is with the football. Then there’s judgment on the outside of, ‘Well, he didn’t throw for this many yards or didn’t throw for this many touchdowns.’ I don’t care. He was efficient with the football, and he did everything he needed to do for us to win the game. That doesn’t just apply with your star football player in Jalen Hurts. That also applies for the rest of the team.

Q. It is more obvious for those watching the game that there is a new play caller and new OC? (Zach Berman)

Nick Sirianni: Yeah, we’ll see. We’ll see.

Q. Defensive Coordinator Vic Fangio said that he was going to leave it up to you to announce the starters at corner and safety. (Tim McManus)

Nick Sirianni: You’ll see when we get to that. I always respect your guys’ job of what you guys got to do, and I appreciate your persistence and your relentlessness. We teach that a lot, to have persistence and relentlessness to do our job, and I just don’t think at this time it benefits us to say that when I don’t have to. So yeah, I’ll announce it on Thursday.

Q. You guys have emphasized that you’re moving on from last year. The last banner night in 2018, it’s famous that the fans booed the Eagles at halftime because they weren’t happy with the way things were going, albeit it was banner night. How do you feel about the fact that even though it is banner night for you guys, the fans will still have the standard of performing and winning at a high level? (Dave Uram)

Nick Sirianni: I didn’t know it was banner night. We won’t be out for that.

Q. How do you feel about QB Jalen Hurts this offseason and this summer? (Zach Berman)

Nick Sirianni: I think he’s been so consistent for my fifth year here. That’s why he continues to get better because of his consistency. I just appreciate that from him.