Nick Sirianni seemed nervous at Friday’s introductory press conference, but that’s alright. The Eagles hired him to be a football coach and not a master orator.

It caused some consternation among the crowd of people who believe that somebody who can’t communicate with the media can’t become a “leader of men” in the locker room, but that idea was disputed by Colts’ stud linebacker Darius Leonard, who said this:

Well said right there. We agree.

Sirianni went on 94 WIP this morning for his first discussion with Angelo Cataldi, and would you know it – he sounded more comfortable! That’s amazing. It’s almost as if you become better at something when you do it more often. Add to the fact that he’s on the phone speaking with one person, and you’d imagine things would go more smoothly in this kind of forum.

Angelo did a nice job with the interview, throwing him a few softballs to get started. Sirianni talked about his family’s football history, and quite frankly, it seems like they are football nerds, but in a good way. It seems like a family that lives and breathes football, which is… what you’re looking for in the head coach of your NFL team. Not sure about you, but I get more of a “dorky football lover” vibe from Sirianni vs. the “leader of men” cornball aura that emanates from somebody like Joe Judge or James Franklin. When Sirianni talks, it doesn’t feel like he’s talking “at” you or talking “down” to you, as if you’re a person who knows nothing about the sport.

Cataldi segued the softballs into the quarterback question, and here’s how the coach replied:

“We’ve watched a little bit of tape to this point now, so we’re into that process of evaluating those players. I think we have really good talent evaluators. One of the things that’s important to me as I build a staff is ‘can they get the player better?’ Right? Once we get a player in the door, can that coach get him better with the fundamentals and technique and can they help us get the right player in the door by evaluating that talent? Those are really the thing – can we evaluate talent well to get the right players in the door? And then can we develop that talent once we get those players in the door? So the first part of this is getting the coaches in there to help with the process. Yes, I’m watching a little bit of tape and coming up with some thoughts here, but it’s a group effort. It’s Shane Steichen coming up with his thoughts. I know he can evaluate talent. It’s Kevin Patullo and Brian Johnson coming up with their thoughts. And as we gather those thoughts – and this is every single position – evaluating our thoughts on all these guys, going through a thorough evaluation, again getting the right guys in here in the coming weeks, days, months, figuring out what we have on this team and how it fits what we want to do. We’re going through that process right now.” 

Okay, not much there.

Here’s a follow-up question about competition at the quarterback spot:

“A core value is competition. That’s competition everywhere. That’s competition with the quarterbacks, that’s competition with the wide receivers, that’s competition with the DBs. That’s competition everywhere.  Everybody is going to compete. I am going to compete with Shane (Steichen) on things. We’re going to compete in the building with coaches. If we’re going to run a play in a game – let me just use this illustration – if we’re going to run a play in a game, we have to practice that play. We have to feel good about calling that play because we practiced it over and over again. It’s the same thing in competition. Because we’re gonna have to compete against Washington and Dallas and New York, we have to practice that. Everybody. Competition is the core value for every single position we have here with the Philadelphia Eagles.”

Okay, so it might be a QB competition in training camp, or it might not. Maybe Wentz gets traded. It’s all bullshit anyway, wondering about the quarterback position in February. We’ll have to just bide our time and enjoy watching the Flyers and Sixers win in the offseason.

For what it’s worth, Sirianni says he and Frank Reich watched a lot of Eagles film when they were putting together their Colts offense. So he’s obviously very familiar with Carson. It’s not like he’s walking into a new situation completely blind and just popping in the film for the first time. He’s certainly downplaying how much he knows about both Wentz and Hurts. They probably spent a few hours talking about it in his interview with Jeffrey Lurie and Howie Roseman.

But anyway, it was a step forward. He did a lot better on Monday morning, and the full interview is right here: