Following the Eagles ugly one-point loss to the Falcons, head coach Nick Sirianni spoke to reporters and tried to explain some of their play-calling decisions, what their plan was without A.J. Brown, and why he thought Jalen Hurts played an outstanding game.
He admitted that they didn’t do a good enough job in the last two minutes of the game, saying they are all responsible for the loss — coaches and players — and it’s never just one play that results in a one-point loss.
Here’s what else the head coach had to say:
On specific play call decisions
Calling a timeout on the second to last drive
Sirianni said that they were going to delay and then call a timeout, so it wasn’t anything to do with Fred Johnson.
On passing on 3rd-and-3
The head coach acknowledged that there is a mechanism on the play for QB Jalen Hurts to sit down and take a sack, but they saw an opportunity that didn’t work out.
“You know, they were running a certain defense and junking it up in the middle, so we were trying to go around the outside and it didn’t work.”
Sirianni also explained the decision to kick a field goal on the subsequent 4th-and-3 play, saying that he thought they might not have any timeouts left, though they did get one with the incomplete pass, but with a minute left they wanted to go up six points. He acknowledged that it didn’t work.
“So, the decision to pass it there, again, like I said, they were junking it up inside, with it being fourth and three to go for it, I thought with them not having any timeouts I wanted them to be down a touchdown and see if they could drive the field and they did.
Hats off to them.”
On the play-calling role
Sirianni was curt with his reply when asked to clarify if the play calls were coming from him or OC Kellen Moore.
“Kellen is the offensive coordinator that makes the calls, yeah. If you’re trying to stir that up. I’m the head coach.”
On A.J. Brown’s absence
Sirianni wouldn’t confirm A.J. Brown’s comments on the broadcast divulging that he expects to miss a couple of weeks, with the head coach saying he’s not going to give a timetable because they don’t know what will happen.
While it was tough to lose Brown late in the week, when the game plan was already established, they’ve all been in the league long enough to know that those things can happen and to adjust.
“You change the game plan around. You still want to attack them a certain way, but now you’re going to use different players in how you attack them. So obviously A.J. being down, he’s one of the best players in the NFL, so you’re going to miss him.
Yeah, us having the time to go over and switch everything, we had plenty of time to do that. You know, like I said, I think that the offense, where we struggled on offense was more so in the red zone. We moved the ball well.
So, it was those struggles in the red zone we’ve got to get corrected, because you’ve got to score points down there. Sometimes it was like you guys have said, I went for it in those scenarios; sometimes we stopped ourselves.”
On the defense’s lack of QB pressures
Sirianni said they’ll have to look at the film to see what went wrong, but explained that sometimes you have to earn the right to rush the QB by securing the passing game. The Falcons weren’t in a bunch of passing situations because they were getting 4-6 yards per carry in early downs.
“This is football. It doesn’t matter what level you’re at. It’s how you tackle, it’s how you defeat blocks, it’s how you pierce the line of scrimmage. And then we’ve got to be able to make sure we put them in positions to succeed. There are plenty of ways to do it.
Sometimes with five down front, sometimes it’s with the six down front, sometimes it’s with the pressure, sometimes it’s with secondary pressure, sometimes it’s with blitz zero, sometimes it’s moving the front. I mean, yeah, we’ve got to do what we need to do to help put them in positions.
It’s not just ever, ‘Hey, do this to stop this.’ That’s just not how football works. There are many different answers, and we’ve got to find the right answers and help put the guys in position and the guys got make plays.”
On the missed tackles
“A couple missed tackles in some situations. A couple good tackles. I thought the guys, early, had great effort to the football. We knew we needed to do that with Bijan [Robinson] the way he can make somebody miss.
It felt like when he would make somebody miss, there would be somebody right there on his hip. We knew he would get some that would make some guys miss, but our emphasis was trying to make sure we were there with the rest of the guys to pick up the pieces.”
On Jalen Hurts’ performance
“You know, some of his big runs came on scrambles. There were a couple that were uncalled runs. I thought obviously any time an interception happens you’re going to want that back, but I thought — I looked up at the scoreboard at one point, he was 20 of 25, making a lot of plays for our team in the run game and pass game. I thought he really played an outstanding game.
Again, we’ll all have things that we want back. I think the biggest issue on offense was we weren’t good enough in the red zone. Jalen did a lot of things to help us to be in that football game and have a chance to win that football game.
He played a really good game. Obviously the last play didn’t go as we wanted.”
Other notables
- As for the illegal downfield penalties, Sirianni explained that some of that is with the players moving a little too fast, but several of the issues are on coaches putting them in a good position. He noted that getting things called can be difficult, especially with bubble screens.
“We’ve got to play the rules that are there. I thought, again, like I said, the referees were right on the calls. Sometimes it was a coaching thing and sometimes a player thing.”
- The head coach admitted that he’ll always second-guess the calls that didn’t result in points, but there were others that ended up working out. Still, everything is a learning experience, and they’ll watch the tape and evaluate their decisions in certain situations.
- On Jalen Hurts’ interception, Sirianni explained that they had press man on one of their best players, so the intent of the play was to go downfield. The Falcons defender made a good play, but he’ll have to look at the film to see exactly what happened.
