Nick Sirianni and his Coordinators on the Running Game and Linebackers
Eagles quotes. Let’s share a couple of worthy answers from this week’s press conferences, mostly centered around the decision to finally run the fucking football (and also the changes at linebacker).
Shane Steichen and Jonathan Gannon spoke to the media today, but let’s start first with the head ball coach Nick Sirianni, who was in front of reporters on Monday afternoon.
Nick Sirianni
Why did Boston Scott and Jordan Howard get the nod over Kenneth Gainwell early in the game?
“We felt good about practice with Boston. That’s why we started with him, just the week of practice that led up into it.
With backs, I think I’ve said this before; it’s never going to be something like, ‘Hey, this back is having 20 carries, this back has 10,’ whatever the number is. We’re very aware when a back gets a hot hand, we’ll ride that hot hand. That’s been my experience and what we will continue to do. A guy gets hot, we’ll ride the hot hand. That’s kind of how that played out.
As far as Jordan, with the practice squad bringing him up, obviously we are in constant communication with all these things. We want to be able to keep all our good players. If you brought Jordan up, then you have to put somebody down.
But obviously we know how important Jordan was to the win and that we need him on this football team, and so that’s always in communication. Obviously, that’s something we don’t have to do at this particular moment, but we’ll keep talking through it as we go.”
Why was Eric Wilson a healthy scratch on Sunday?
“With Eric and the way it went down, Davion (Taylor) was going to play a little bit more and so was T.J. (Edwards). And then there was a role for Alex (Singleton) in some of third down areas. So, what it really came down to is we don’t have luxury anymore to dress that many linebackers. What it came down to was, who was going to contribute more on special teams? And Shaun (Bradley) has been such a good special teams presence for us these last eight weeks of the season. So that was kind of a numbers game there, kind of what happened and why we went there.”
Shane Steichen
Did they go into the game knowing they were going to establish the run –
“Yeah I think we wanted to establish the run game, and I think anytime you go into a game you have a vision of what you want it to look like, and sometimes it doesn’t always go off like that, but Sunday it did. And you keep sticking with it. I’ve been in games last year as a coordinator where I’m saying ‘shoot, we’re gonna run the heck out of it,’ and early on in the first quarter we start throwing it and the ball isn’t hitting the ground. And we end up throwing it 45 times for 350 yards. In most cases things like that happen, so if things are working, you stay with it.”
What took them so long to get the running game going?
“I don’t know if it’s especially that. Each week is different. You go in with a vision of what you want it to look like, and sometimes you’re like ‘oh shoot we’re gonna throw it,’ but in that game we ran it. And we ran it good, so we stayed with it. Bottom line.”
What makes Boston and Jordan effective short-yardage runners?
“They did a great job of just running downhill. They saw the holes and hit them. The line did a great job of creating those holes, but they had great vision and just pounded it in there. Obviously we were short one guy a few times down in there, but our offensive line just mauled off the ball and we got it in there.”
Jonathan Gannon
Why the change at linebacker? Why more T.J. Edwards? Was that Detroit-centric, or –
“A little bit. We try to break it up into three different things: What do our guys do well? What are we trying to defend? And how is the game going? We made a little bit of a change with Davion and T.J. in there playing. We’re excited about everybody in that linebacker room, but both of those guys we felt did a pretty good job and played winning football.”
Did you challenge more in general, or did you win enough on 1st and 2nd down that it allowed you to challenge more?
“A little bit of both. Going into the game we figured out, in our mind, you gotta start making decisions before the players come in. Not everything takes away one thing. Ultimately trying to say hey, here’s who we have, here’s what they do well, and here’s what we have to defend that we cannot get beat by. Then you go down with that and have to be able to counter some things, where if the game’s not going right you can change it. Or if the game is going well, you can leave it. I do feel like the D-line dominated this game in run and pass and we got to a lot of second and third down obvious passing situations. All nine guys who played up front played winning football, they executed and it made it a tough day for Detroit obviously. I think it was a blend of us winning first down that kind of fed into second and third down.”