Nick Sirianni Enters COVID Protocols, Reveals Plan if He Can't Coach vs. Giants

The Eagles head coach is in quarantine hoping to prevent further spread of the illness

Nick Sirianni woke up Wednesday morning feeling lousy, the kind of sickness that not even a 27-17 win ov er Washington a day earlier could cure.

The Eagles head coach immediately self-reported his illness to the team’s medical staff then, hours later, entered the NFL's COVID-19 protocols. His availability for Sunday’s game against the New York Giants is now uncertain.

Sirianni was one of two NFL coaches to enter the virus protocols on Wednesday, with New York Jets coach Robert Saleh the other. Last week, the New Orleans Saints were without their head coach Sean Payton, who entered the COVID protocols, but the Saints were still able to defeat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 9-0.

The Eagles added OT Le'Raven Clark to the COVID list on Wednesday, too, where he joins teammates OL Landon Dickerson and practice squad RB Jason Huntley, both of whom were added to the list earlier in the week.

“Obviously, we are where we are right now,” Sirianni said. “I’m feeling OK. I’m feeling a little bit better now, which is good. The rest of the week, I’ll be in every meeting – obviously, virtually…I’ll be running those. Just business as usual.”

Running meetings virtually is one thing. Being on the sideline is another thing entirely, and that is the big question on this short week – will Sirianni feel well enough and be able to get cleared in time for Sunday’s visit against the New York Giants?

“I’m hopefully going to be ready to go on Sunday,” he said. “If not, we’ve been prepared for this. I’m very confident in what we did as far as getting ahead of things…Everything up to game day will be normal except I’m not in the building, but I’ll run everything the same way because I’m the head coach.”

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Sirianni said that offensive coordinator Shane Steichen would call plays if he cannot be on the sideline and passing game coordinator Kevin Patullo would handle game-day management decisions, such as whether to go for it on fourth down, the coin toss, and any other situation that arises during the game.

“Shane and I have been calling the game together the entire year,” said Sirianni. “For whatever reason, I get credit or the other way around when it doesn’t go good for the play caller, but Shane and I have been calling it together and have been calling it together the entire year. Shane has done a great job there.”

Nick Sirianni after beating Washington 27-17 / USA Today

As for Patullo, Sirianni said that RB coach and assistant head coach Jemal Singleton will also be involved, but because Singleton coaches a position, he doesn’t want that to be completely disrupted.

Patullo doesn't coach a position.

“When this all came out a couple years ago you obviously have to talk about it a lot,” said defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon. “My first initial reaction…is it's exhausting how much we talk about this, honestly, but you have to do that. So we've talked about a lot of different scenarios. What if this happens? Plan A, Plan B. Who's doing what? What are we doing? How we handling the players meetings, all that so feel really good.

“We've talked through all of this. It's expect the unexpected and Nick's done a good job since we got here because we're still kind of in this world that we're living in.”

Sirianni said that much of the game-planning for the Giants has been done, something that was taken care of after their game against Washington was postponed from Sunday to Tuesday night.

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The coach is under quarantine at a hotel to try to prevent the spread of the illness.

He said he felt OK following Tuesday night's win, but perhaps this is the tip of the COVID iceberg for the Eagles and, if so, perhaps the NFL takes that into consideration when deciding whether or not to postpone Sunday’s game against New York.

“We took a lot of precautions as far as last week and last couple of weeks of taking more precautions knowing that this was getting (bad), the pandemic was getting more and more – I don’t want to say serious because it’s always been serious – just the spread was more rapid,” said the coach.

“We’ve taken more precautions even these last couple of weeks. That doesn’t mean that you’re not going to have an outbreak. But I’m not going to play a hypothetical there. I feel like we’ve done the right things. We’ll play it by ear if that does happen.

"Again, the NFL has done a good job putting the protocols in place and all that. So that’s not my job to lobby for anything. They’re going to do what they think is best for the players … coaches and league. We’ll trust that, and we’ll play when they tell us to play.”

Ed Kracz is the publisher of SI.com’s Eagle Maven and co-host of the Eagles Unfiltered Podcast. Check out the latest Eagles news at www.SI.com/NFL/Eagles or www.eaglemaven.com and please follow him on Twitter: @kracze.