The big topic at Nick Sirianni’s midweek press conference was the late-game offensive possession in the Falcons loss, when the Eagles threw the ball on 3rd and 3 before kicking a field goal to go up 6. They lost when the defense collapsed on the ensuing Atlanta drive.

It gets deep into analytics and data collection, and when Sirianni was asked about the situation, more specifically about kicking a field goal instead of going for it on 4th and 3, he went into a 500-word explanation.

The head ball coach:

If you look at the history of that call, initially you go through it — and I’m going to try to drag myself through the mud as much as I possibly can, because, quite frankly, that’s the only way you get better. Is to really look at your decisions, look at every decision you make and say, ‘Hey, did I make the right decision?’ And sometimes the play fails for whatever reason, but you’ve got to still look at it as each decision.

In that scenario, we’ve put ourselves in that before, and it was a little similar to the week before where we kicked the field goal. Now, there was less time left on the clock, but we were 4th-and-3 at the 3, which is arguably probably a little bit more — in my mind, you could go for that a little bit more in the Green Bay game than you do here.

So, what I did was look through the entire league. I said to our analytics department, ‘Could you give me every 4th down decision when teams are in range in four-minute offense?’ Because if you’re up 6, you’re kicking it every single time because that’s going to put you up two scores. So, I asked for every time it was 1 point to 5 points, the team was up, under four minutes, every 4th down from the 34 and in. And there were 4th-and-1s that were going for it. I think there were twelve 4th-and-1s, there was a 4th-and-3 that Houston went against Dallas for in 2022, and then there was a 4th-and-2 that the Jets went for against Tampa. But that was it, and the rest were field goals.

I’ve put myself in that situation prior to the call, so I felt like in the moment, my conviction in the moment was, I knew exactly what I wanted. Again, is the outcome always what you want? No, but your conviction in the call, I was completely convinced that kicking the field goal there was the right decision based on all my studies. Now, I come back, and I reevaluate it, and I’m even more convicted, to be quite honest with you, just because of everything that goes into that.

I think there’s something else that is very noticeable. As an offensive coach, there’s a stress having to score a touchdown when you’re giving the ball back to a team. There’s a stress in that. I get it, they get an extra down to do so, I understand all that. But there’s a different stress being down 6 as opposed to 3. That’s also my experience as an offensive coach. You know what, our defense had done a really — where we were getting hurt was in the run game, not necessarily them dropping back and passing. Obviously, we didn’t do a good enough job on that drive, but to that point, we had only given up 15 points and we were really salty in the red zone up to that point.

It’s a lengthy answer, but if Saquon catches that ball, we’re not talking about this. And if Vic Fangio’s defense doesn’t look like Swiss cheese, we’re not talking about this. Ultimately there were multiple opportunities for the players to end this game, regardless of the coaching decisions, and they didn’t do it. Saquon flubbed it, the pass rush couldn’t get anywhere close to Kirk Cousins, and the D as a whole allowed the Falcons to march right down the field even after the offense did enough to force Atlanta into needing a touchdown.

And as Sirianni mentioned the other day, they decided to throw instead of run because of the defense Atlanta was showing. So if they ran into a heavy box, they get stuffed and likely kick the field goal anyway, but kill that extra 30 seconds or so off the clock. That’s really the crux of this entire thing. It’s less about the decision to go or not go on 4th, or to throw on 3rd, because the latter was schematically a very good call. It was about situational football and clock burning based on the level of trust in your defense.