It was predictable that Nick Sirianni wasn’t going to offer alibis for another riverboat gambler’s act during the Eagles’ 28-23, closer-than-it-would-have-been victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars Sunday.
Sirianni took to the Zoom mic Monday and largely repeated what he’d said the night before: That the Jaguars turning a 22-0 deficit in the third quarter into a first down at the Eagles’ 13 with 1:42 to go and on the verge of taking a lead was … well, was the fault of no one but him.
As long as you take into account unlucky circumstance rather than loose play on the field and on his sideline.
“Any time it doesn’t go how you want it to go, you’re going to go back and look at everything,” Sirianni said. “Our job is to get better. If we want our players to get better, we have to be in that mindset.”
That said…
“Looking back on it, thinking would I do anything different, to be honest, sometimes I say absolutely. In this particular case, I felt like we did the right thing in all those scenarios,” Sirianni said. “I understand that I’ll always be judged on the outcome, not the process. But I have to make sure that I stick to the process.”
Specifically, Sirianni was limiting the question at hand to a couple of fourth-down “tush-push” plays. But he was hinting about plays requiring one yard or so for a first down, not the fourth-and-3 call the Eagles, leading 10-0 at the time, faced with 4:55 left in the first half.
Rather than a chip shot for a 13-point lead there, Staff Sirianni had quarterback Jalen Hurts attempt a pass that fell incomplete. The Eagles did score a touchdown – Saquon Barkley’s second TD of the half – all of 22 seconds before intermission. But Sirianni, as the analytics would properly mandate, decided to go for two after a Jaguars penalty on the extra point pushed the ball half the distance to the goal line.
That’s where a tush-push attempt of a yard-and-a-half failed, Jalen Hurts not accustomed to failure in such a scenario. But maybe these guys shouldn’t be so shocked when the formerly automatic butt-bump play doesn’t work now. After all, Jason Kelce is currently getting paid to partake in tailgates and throwing some jerk’s cell phone instead of pushing any and all opposing NFL defenders out of Hurts’ way.
“Man, we’ve been really good at that,” Sirianni said. “It’s helped us win a lot of games. Again, it’s a lonely place. It’s definitely a lonely place when you don’t convert a fourth down. I’ll always take that on my shoulders. Always.”
Well, that second fourth-down try seemed justified, and yes, this is Monday afternoon quarterbacking, but that first one on the fourth-and-3 at the Jags’ 22? Seemed a touch overdone, no?
“At that time, in that game and what we’ve done in the past, I was doing everything I thought to help our football team win the football game,” Sirianni said. “Two weeks ago when I was explaining the fourth-and-3 that we went for against the New York Giants, I circled the players and I said, ‘I don’t go for this unless I trust …’ and I circled Jalen on the screen and circled A.J. (Brown) on the screen – and we converted.”
Anyway, with his team leading 16-0 at the half, Sirianni seemed to want to get back to numerical normality, so after Hurts took a shotgun snap, cut right and loped in from 18 yards out, it was 22-0 Eagles. Naturally, Sirianni pushed to go for two, and again, Hurts was snuffed from three yards out.
But it was after that play that Jacksonville, which to that point in the third quarter had gained a total of 43 yards for no points, started moving the ball. Once highly regarded quarterback Trevor Lawrence snuck in from the 1 and their two-point attempt worked, and it was 22-8. Then Barkley made the mistake of letting the officials decided if he was down or fumbled, and Jacksonville’s Travon Walker picked up the ball and returned it 35 yards for a score. The Jags, after a confounding review of the alleged fumble and even more confusing officials explanation afterward, were awarded six points, then scored two more of their own and suddenly the Eagles’ comfort zone has shrunk to six points.
But the Eagles began yet another drive, and this time, it went to a fourth-and-1 at the Jacksonville 25. Again, a chip shot Jake Elliott field goal would make it a two-score game, but Sirianni of course went for it, only he apparently signed off on passing up a tailor-made tush-push and watched as Hurts threw another incomplete pass.
The teams then traded fourth-quarter touchdowns (the Eagles yet again failing on a two-point try), but Sirianni did eventually decide to give kicker Jake Elliott a field goal try on a fourth-and-4 at the Jags’ 39. But this attempt was from 57 yards, and Elliott was slightly wide right.
Hence the game coming down to the Eagles’ 13 approaching the final minute. That’s when unlikely savior Nakobe Dean picked off Lawrence in the end zone to salvage a win for the Eagles. And as lineman Landon Dickerson would say later with a shrug, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
“Everybody’s on the same page for whatever we have to do to win,” he added. “There’s no political side to it, there ain’t no nothing, whether we throw the ball 100 times to win or run the ball 100 times to win. It’s just win. It’s all I care about.”
The same goes for the coach.
“Not only do you trust your process, but you trust your players,” Sirianni said. “Doing those two things, trusting your process and trusting your players, has given us a good track record. But hey, it didn’t work yesterday. It’s a lonely place when it doesn’t work.”
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NOTES >> Sirianni didn’t offer an update for receiver A.J. Brown, who didn’t answer the third-quarter bell Sunday due to what was called a knee injury. A national report later in the day indicated Brown’s injury wasn’t as serious as first thought. … As for Barkley, who hinted he was banged up a bit during the game, though he finished it, Sirianni said, “We’ll see how the week progresses (for him).”
