Photo by Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images The Eagles’ QB spoke after their loss to the Falcons and talked about some of the play-calling late in the game, and a bit about his trust in guys like Saquon Barkley and Britain Covey. The Eagles’ loss to the Falcons had some highs and lows for quarterback Jalen Hurts. He spoke to reporters after the game and talked about his message to Saquon Barkley, the effect of missing A.J. Brown on offense, and why he trusts Britain Covey. Here’s what the QB had to say: On his message to Saquon Barkley “Obviously it’s a tough loss. We learn from it. I trust him every day of the week to make a play just like everybody else, and so we’ll be better from it.” Hurts was later asked what the alternative was on that 3rd-and-3 play call if Barkley wasn’t open, but the QB opted not to add any wood to the fire. He reiterated that they just didn’t make the play in the moment, but he still has a ton of trust in Barkley. When asked if that third-down play was one they repped a lot at practice, Hurts simply said, “Yes.” On his late-game interception Hurts explained that he was just trying to make a play down the field, and Jessie Bates made a good play to pick it off. The QB said he’ll just have to continue to prepare for those situations late in games, and put the offense in better positions to take advantage. “I think in the end, I felt very prepared going into those moments. In that moment, it just wasn’t our time.” The quarterback was asked if that was the play call he was expecting at that moment, and he noted that it’s not a matter of expectations, it’s just a matter of executing what’s called. He came up short in that moment. On being without A.J. Brown “Obviously, he’s one of the best receivers in the league. Of course he’s definitely missed, but it doesn’t change the trust that I have in everybody else to step up. I think we had, you know, guys step up in a big way. [Britain] Covey made some great plays out there. [DeVonta Smith] made plays. We just didn’t meet the moment in terms of it wasn’t for us tonight.” As for how the workload was distributed in Brown’s absence, Hurts pointed to OC Kellen Moore, but said that he trusts the offensive coordinator as they continue to build the offense and their rapport together. Still, the QB emphasized that other guys stepped up, and while they all need to do better, ultimately he felt like they played hard and just didn’t take advantage of some of their opportunities. On his trust with Britain Covey “It’s just a lot of time on task working with [Britain Covey], and, you know, conversations and reps, his approach, his intentionality in what he does. And you know, he showed up for us, and we’ll need him to continue to do that. And I think the most important thing is everybody is focused and doing their jobs to help the team win. And, as I said before, to do that, you just have to learn from everything. You have to learn from your mistakes. And we will, we’ll be better from it.” On his message to the team Hurts told the team to keep pressing forward and to keep their heads up. He explained that they need to intensely control the “controllables,” noting there were a lot things that they could clean up from a fundamental and details standpoint in that game. The QB said that they’ve come together as a unit, and now just need to continue on their journey and learn from it all. He later talked about how there isn’t a secret ingredient to pushing through adversity, it’s just a matter of learning from things and getting better as a result. “I said this before and I’ll say it again, there’s no difference between, you know, the joys and the pains, the wins and the losses. It’s a matter of if you can learn from it. I think that’s the perspective that I have on this, whether it is good, bad or indifferent, we’re going to learn from our goal out there to go out there and play dominant football and win football games and do enough to win the game. Ultimately to better ourselves. Better ourselves in growth and learning from these moments. And so in the end, winning is the only thing that matters. And to win, you have to continue to learn. You have to continue to grow. And I think this team will continue to do that.”

Photo by Wagner Meier/Getty Images Let’s get to the Philadelphia Eagles links … Point the blame for latest Eagles meltdown directly at Nick Sirianni – NBCSP The unthinkable has become the norm. Nightmare endings have become inevitable. It keeps happening and there doesn’t seem to be anything Nick Sirianni can do to stop it. The players have changed. A bunch of ‘em. Twenty-two guys who started a game last year are gone. The coaches have changed. Both coordinators and half a dozen position coaches are new this year. The one thing that hasn’t changed, the biggest common denominator, is Sirianni, and when we start to assign blame for yet another preposterous nightmare Eagles loss, that’s where we have to start. Because his job right now is setting the culture, preparing the football team, making the big decisions that set the tone for what we see on the field. And what we’ve seen on the field way too often lately is disastrous. NFL Week 2 Under Review: The Surprising Saints and Nick Sirianni’s Big Blunder – The Ringer Sirianni has been stripped of almost all of his responsibilities. He doesn’t do the game-planning or play-calling on offense. He doesn’t hire the coordinators. And he doesn’t have autonomy on roster decisions. What he does handle is game management—and he needs to nail it, especially considering that he works for Jeffrey Lurie, who has long been forward-thinking when it comes to analytics. Sirianni turtled in a key spot on Monday night, and it cost his team. A closer look at Nick Sirianni’s faulty decision-making that cost the Eagles – BGN This brings us to the final poor game management decision: kicking a FG to turn a 1 score game into a 1 score game. It is 4th and 3 at the ATL 10-yard line with 1:39 on the clock. The Eagles make the decision to kick a FG, which not only eliminates the possibility of winning the game on 1 play, it also gives up 20 yards of field position (via the ensuing kickoff/touchback) with no time runoff in a situation where time is paramount, and the Falcons have no timeouts. Per ESPN analytics, the probability of winning the game if you go for it on 4th down is 95% while the probability of winning if you kick a FG drops to 90%. But that is baking in the fact that you could convert on 4th down. What if we remove that from the equation entirely? What if we input the scenario of giving the Falcons the ball at the 10-yard line down 3 or the 30-yard line down 6? The result is a 7% win probability in the former and a 10% win probability in the latter. Simply put, the decision to kick a FG, even if you make it, hurts your win probability more than failing a 4th down attempt. Late-game decision making in the Eagles’ loss to the Falcons turned up the heat on Nick Sirianni – Inquirer Penalties fall on the coach, too, because too many can be an indictment of how practices are run. How are the Eagles still getting called for illegal offensive linemen downfield on run-pass options? Wasn’t that a first season issue? But here we are three years into Sirianni’s tenure and the Eagles were flagged three times for the infraction. “Some of them are on us as coaches; some of them are on a player going too fast,” Sirianni said. “We coach that, not to go too fast. But some of them are on us in certain scenarios when we call them.”Sirianni was more aggressive on fourth downs earlier in the game. He went for it on the Eagles’ second series on fourth-and-4 at the Falcons’ 9. But he had Hurts drop on both third and fourth down. Why not run it on third knowing he would gamble on fourth? Handing out 10 awards from the Eagles-Falcons game – PhillyVoice 6) The ‘No Resistance’ Award: The Eagles’ run defense. Of course, it’s hard to rush the passer when you’re getting gashed by the run. Bijan Robinson and Tyler Allgeier combined for 23 carries for 150 yards (6.5 yards per carry). The Packers ran for 7.8 yards per carry against the Eagles’ defense Week 1. That’s an ugly developing trend. The entire Eagles defensive front is playing the run poorly, particularly Huff, but more alarmingly, where are Jordan Davis and Jalen Carter? A Bad Loss – Iggles Blitz The DL was invisible. Atlanta has an underrated OL, but they shouldn’t manhandle the Eagles the way they did. That is incredibly troubling. Kirk Cousins had all day to throw on the final drive. The Eagles knew they would be passing and still couldn’t get close. The holes in the zone coverage are massive. The defense feels like a group of individuals rather than a cohesive unit right now. That has to change. The tackling was bad. Again. Nick Sirianni and his coaching staff have a lot of issues to fix on a short week. And they have the hottest team in the league on the schedule for the next game. That’s not ideal at all. NFL Week 2: Biggest questions, takeaways for every game – ESPN Eye-popping stat: Cousins was pressured on just 2-of-14 dropbacks (14%) in the first half, the lowest rate he’s faced in any half since Week 1 of 2023. 2024 NFL Season, Week 2: What We Learned from Falcons’ win over Eagles on Monday night – NFL.com Philly needs to clean it up. The Eagles will look back at this one with significant regret for more than just how the game ended. Philadelphia had a number of positive gains wiped out by penalties — including three illegal man downfield flags — and even the positive plays that stood occasionally came with a catch (e.g., Hurts’ scramble and spike, which drew a delay of game penalty). It’s early, and these kinds of minor errors tend to happen. But nine penalties (accepted for

Photo by Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images I have seen a lot of misunderstanding out there about the faulty decision making by the Eagles at the end of their collapse to the Falcons. When I was in elementary school, I loved going to the High School football games and would always take my trusty notebook with me to keep track of run/pass splits and man/zone defense alignments. As soon as football season was over, it was on to basketball where I kept shot charts for every player on the team. I knew from an early age that I was a very (very) big nerd and sometimes I forget that everyone else isn’t. So what follows is me attempting to explain optimal decision making for football games, and since it is fresh I’ll use the Eagles game as an example, although this logic applies to any game. Declining a Penalty on 3rd and 1 The first decision point that I’ve seen confusion about is the Eagles declining an encroachment penalty on 3rd and 1 at the ATL 18 with 2:00 left. This was the correct call. If the Eagles accept the penalty, it is now 1st down and the Falcons, assuming they get a stop, can use 3 timeouts on 1st, 2nd, and 3rd down to minimize clock runoff and get the ball back with about 1:45 on the clock. By declining the penalty, the Eagles force the Falcons to call a timeout after 3rd down which means that they will now be out of timeouts following 2nd down on the next set of downs and there will be an entire play clock the Eagles can run out following the next 3rd down. The probability of being stopped on 3rd and 1 is very small, especially with the Tush Push at their disposal, and if they are stopped they can still go for it on 4th down. The Falcons knew that, that’s why they intentionally committed a penalty. The Eagles knew that too, that’s why they declined the penalty. Passing the Ball on 3rd & 3 Now we get to the exact situation that we are trying to set up when we declined the previous penalty. It is 3rd and 3 at the ATL 10. There is 1:46 left on the clock and the Falcons are out of time outs. If you pick up a 1st down the game is over. If you don’t, you have a decision to make on 4th down (which is a fairly easy one, but we will get to that momentarily). In the world where you don’t get the 1st down, it is vital that the clock continue to run. With the time to run the play and the ensuing 40 second play clock, you can take the clock below 60 seconds before a potential 4th down snap. The one thing you can’t do, is let the clock stop. The Eagles dialed up a pass play and it resulted in a drop. The play call is a bad decision. Should it have worked? Yes. Saquon Barkley should have secured the catch and the game should be over. But he didn’t, and now it isn’t, and now the clock stops. If you call a run play in that situation, the clock will continue to roll, even if you don’t pick up the 1st down. Sure, the Falcons are expecting a run, but they have been expecting a run the entire drive and your last 3 handoffs have gone for 9, 4, and 3 yards. But the yardage isn’t even the most important thing, the time is. Per ESPN analytics, the Eagles would have had a 96% chance to win the game if they had run the ball on 3rd down and had no gain. The decision to decline a penalty on 3rd and 1 so you could get to this exact situation to run the clock, and then not run the clock is inconsistent and the wrong decision. Kicking a FG to Go Up 6 This brings us to the final poor game management decision: kicking a FG to turn a 1 score game into a 1 score game. It is 4th and 3 at the ATL 10-yard line with 1:39 on the clock. The Eagles make the decision to kick a FG, which not only eliminates the possibility of winning the game on 1 play, it also gives up 20 yards of field position (via the ensuing kickoff/touchback) with no time runoff in a situation where time is paramount, and the Falcons have no timeouts. Per ESPN analytics, the probability of winning the game if you go for it on 4th down is 95% while the probability of winning if you kick a FG drops to 90%. But that is baking in the fact that you could convert on 4th down. What if we remove that from the equation entirely? What if we input the scenario of giving the Falcons the ball at the 10-yard line down 3 or the 30-yard line down 6? The result is a 7% win probability in the former and a 10% win probability in the latter. Simply put, the decision to kick a FG, even if you make it, hurts your win probability more than failing a 4th down attempt. Why is that? It is for the simple reason that teams down 3 tend to score 3 points, while teams that are down 6 tend to score 7 points. Down 3, teams get conservative once they are in FG range, content to take the game to overtime. When they are down 6, they are forced to be aggressive and go for the win. Kicking a FG in this situation costs you a chance to win the game with a conversion, 20 yards of field position, and the opponent’s natural tendency towards conservativism while really only gaining you the ability to not go to OT if they kick a FG. It is the quintessential “playing not to lose” strategy. When Bad Decisions

Photo by Cooper Neill/Getty Images 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