The Eagles dropped their seventh game in a row on Sunday, losing to the Giants in a game that capped off a losing NFC East trifecta for the Birds in as many weeks. Reporters had to wait quite a while to talk to head coach Nick Sirianni after the game.
Sirianni didn’t start his post-game press conference until about 72 minutes after the final whistle of Sunday’s game. When he was asked about it – since it’s pretty unusual for him to take that long – he explained that he was talking to players.
“Talking
to some guys, talking to some players. Those guys — everyone puts everything they have into this, so I want to make sure I talk to every guy first of all after the game. Then a couple of the guys stopped in the office just to talk through it. That’s not unusual. I appreciate the connection that we have there.”
Here’s what else the head coach had to say:
On Joe Milton’s performance
“I think just like everybody, [Joe Milton] had some really good plays and then he’s going to have plays that he’s going to want back, naturally. But I thought he did a lot of good things, a lot of solid things, made some plays with his feet, gave our guys a couple chances downfield. Thought he was good in the play action world. I thought he did some really nice things. Obviously, we have to play better complimentary football to be able to have the run game coincide with the play actions that we were running, but there were some good things that he had.”
On the 4th-and-1 play call
Sirianni said that they had some time to think about the fourth-and-one call, and they were debating between a couple different options. Ultimately, the head coach was good with the call and with what they ended up running.
“Obviously, it didn’t work. So, we’ll go back to the drawing board in there on that play. But there was a lot of time to think about that call because again, we got on the ball, it went to a two-minute warning, had a lot of time there, and obviously it didn’t work. So, we’ll go back and see what we can do differently offensively.”
On the QB protection
When asked about the unblocked sack-fumble, Sirianni said he wasn’t going to get into who was at fault, but did acknowledge that anytime there’s a guy that’s free in that situation, they have to look at the coaching to see what went wrong. He noted that it becomes an execution issue after they sort out the coaching issue, so it’s on everyone to get it fixed.
“Obviously in that case, we’ll make those corrections in person with everybody. Whether it’s on us as coaches or whether it’s an execution thing, it’s still on us as coaches. It starts with me and it’s always on me; every product that’s on that field is my responsibility. ‘Well, there was an execution error on this play or that play.’ Well, did I put him in every position I could possibly put him into to go out and execute that?”
On potential coaching changes
“We’ll talk. Obviously, right now my job is to be there for our guys and to go watch the tape and go look through everything.”
Sirianni went on to say that he’ll always look at himself first and go from there, but his job is to coach the players and the coaches, and do anything he can to help this team win games.
“Everything can always be on the table, but I don’t think you change just to change because that’s what your record says that — you’ve got to look at what’s really real and not react to anything else. Again, I just don’t believe you just change just to change. If you have a strong reason to do things in anything, not just change, but in anything and you’re convicted on it, that’s how we’ll go about our business.”
The head coach was asked if OC Sean Mannion was doing a good enough job maximizing the talent they have on offense, and said that no one offensively has done a good enough job. He was clear that it wasn’t just Mannion, and that they all need to get better and figure it out on offense.
“I mean, I think our defense is playing solid. I think they’re doing really good things and it’s hard to keep the game there. I think we’ve got some things that we’re doing on special teams that have been really good, and then we can be more consistent in that particular case, but we have to figure it out on offense. That’s coaches, that’s players, that’s everybody.”
He later said that he doesn’t have a certain threshold for when it’s time to make a change among the coaching staff, but right now he is looking at everything and anything they can do to help this team move forward. Still, he refused to throw any one coach under the bus, and said it was an issue collectively they need to figure out.
