More details on the Nick Sirianni-Jalen Carter sideline interaction

For anyone who was curious.

I’ve seen people ask what the deal was with Nick Sirianni being involved in a seemingly heated sideline interaction during the Philadelphia Eagles’ win over the Pittsburgh Steelers, so, let’s take a look at that.

It started with Jalen Carter committing a very unnecessary (literally “unnecessary roughness”) special teams penalty that almost wiped out a Steelers punt and extended their final drive, which could’ve made it a one-score game, before the flag was ultimately enforced after the change in possession. Carter’s blunder forced the Eagles to take over at their own three-yard line instead of their own six-yard line.

Sirianni was then seen jawing after Carter on the sideline with Eagles senior defensive assistant/defensive line coach Clint Hurtt (who’s a pretty big dude!) and Eagles senior advisor to the general manager/chief security officer/gameday coaching operations Dom DiSandro (aka Big Dom, also a pretty big dude) getting in the way:

Here’s what Sirianni had to say about it during his postgame press conference:

“I’ll never get into the conversations that I have with players, but he made a play that is not part of our standard, so my job is to correct that. Regardless of what it is, we’re going to correct the things that we need to do better and praise the things we need to do well.”

“In that moment, that’s what that was. I love Jalen Carter. I love what he brings to this football team. Right there, he needed to be smarter in that situation because it could have given them the ball back. It didn’t give them the ball back, but it could have. So, we’re going to need to get better at that.”

“That’s what you do as a coach. Again, he played a good game, and I’ll watch the game to see how good of a game he played, but we need him to be better in that scenario and be the consistent player he’s been for the entire year.”

And here’s some more context on the interaction from the well-informed Derrick Gunn:

Sirianni was understandably frustrated with Carter. But Hurtt and DiSandro seemed to think the head coach could afford to take it down a notch.

Ultimately, as DGunn noted, Sirianni and Carter were seen hugging it out later on.

So, all good, I guess!

UPDATE: Sirianni talked more about this interaction again on Monday afternoon.

“We correct everything. As Jalen was coming off the field, I was kind of getting after him there. And I think that there was part of me that wanted to go back [at him] and really— so, I kinda made my point as Jalen was coming off the field, and then I went back, and what Clint was saying is like ‘Coach, I got it, I got it, I’ve already handled it.’ And knowing I had said something to him, Clint has said something to him, and knowing Clint and how he’s coached him for the past half a year that he’s been here, I knew he had it. And so then it kind of went away. And, as you can see, Jalen came back over to me and we had a moment there after the fact. And so I know how good Jalen Carter wants to be, I know how aggressive he plays. My message to him, always, and [to] all our players are, we want to be aggressive, we want to be physical, we want to do all those things, but we want to do that within the rules. And it’s the same thing I say to these guys when they’re celebrating after a big play because we want to have joy together, we want to show our personalities, I want them to be everything— and show who they are within the rules. So, kind of the same message there. We’ve gotta do the things within the rules. Cause you want them to be physical and you want them to be relentless. But we’ve gotta be better and he knows that. And we’ll be better from this moment.”