Up until this point, the Eagles’ new coordinators have been pretty boring at the podium. They’re new to the gig, and doing more media than ever before, so nobody should be surprised that they’re guarded and use a lot of coach speak to respond to questions.

As the season progresses, and specific sequences play out on the field, we get a little bit more from Jonathan Gannon and Shane Steichen. Steichen is incredibly boring and terse, but on Tuesday he did touch on a couple of things that happened in Sunday’s game.

First, on the ineligible man downfield penalties:

Q.We saw a lot of ineligible men downfield penalties, it looks like on the RPOs. It looks like that’s a pretty big part of your offense. How do you fix that?(Dave Zangaro)

SHANE STEICHEN: We just got to continue to work it and talk through it. I mean, that’s the biggest thing, right? We just got to keep that space between not going all the way down the field. You know what I mean?

You got to keep that one yard in between those guys. That’s the biggest thing. We got to keep working it.

Q.Are there things that the opponents are doing to slow up the timing on the throw or is that just you guys offensively executing?(Geoff Mosher)

SHANE STEICHEN: Yeah, we just got to control ourselves off the line of scrimmage a little bit sometimes. Because you can hand it off and you got to get up to the second level to block those guys, so that’s something we got to keep working through.

Q. Back to the illegal downfield stuff. Nick said it’s been a point of emphasis around the league. So, if it continues that way, you guys might have to think about calling it less. Have you seen that? Is it borderline, is it bang-bang? Or have you guys been making that mistake? (John McMullen)

SHANE STEICHEN: No, I think we’re working through it. Like I said, there’s some close calls. And I get it, the officials got to make the calls when they got to make them.

So, we got to continue to work through those. But, obviously, we just got to do a really good job of, like I said, not going downfield. That’s the biggest thing. We got to do a good job. If we want to keep that in our offense, we got to do that.

This one we went over in the takeaways column. The Birds had a touchdown called back on the play where Andre Dillard was flagged:

On a passing play, linemen can’t be further than one yard down the field, which is what happened on the play.


Here’s Steichen on the DeVonta Smith illegal touching penalty, which also wiped out a TD:

Q.In watching the film, Nick gave us his assessment with what happened with WR DeVonta Smith and the illegal touching. Rewatching it again, do you agree with him that it was kind of back and forth in terms of –  (Jeff McLane)

SHANE STEICHEN: Yeah, it was. It was back and forth. It was tough. Obviously, DeVonta would say this, too, we have to hold the line a little more. You know, hold the line a little more. We just got to do a better job there. It’s happened to us twice now.

Second time this year the Birds have had a touchdown called back because of illegal touching. Jalen Reagor was the other sequence, where he got pushed out of bounds and couldn’t get himself re-established.

And here’s Steichen talking about the offensive pass interference on J.J. Arcega-Whiteside:

Q. What was the coaching point with WR J.J. Arcega-Whiteside on the pick play? Did he extend too much or – (Geoff Mosher)

SHANE STEICHEN: Like I said, the guy that was covering him, he’s trying to go and create interference right there. And the guy bubbled over the top and he put his arm out on the guy that was covering him. And I think they saw that and that’s what they called, and we got to live with that.

Q. The arm was the problem there, you think? (Les Bowen)

SHANE STEICHEN: Yeah, I mean, that’s what the officials called. That’s what it looked like.

This was the toughest one, because both guys were kind of jostling near the line of scrimmage. The DB is allowed to make contact within five yards, and it seems like the refs flagged JJAW because he extended his arm and was clearly trying to run a pick play here:

Blah.