Nick Sirianni Takes Team into Bye with Playoff Hopes and a Solid Offense
Being a lover of football, Nick Sirianni is taking a short step away from the game, but he isn’t going too far.
He sent his players and coaches into their bye week with a message of recharging, stepping away from the game, and, to his players, getting their bodies right for the home stretch. That doesn’t mean any football, not for Sirianni.
“We're football guys,” the Eagles coach said earlier in the week. “We're going to think about football. We're going to watch football when we're away.”
For Sirianni, that meant going to his young son’s flag football game on Wednesday. It means watching the Thursday night game between the Steelers and Vikings. And it means tuning into Army-Navy on Saturday.
“That's who I am and that's what I like to do,” he said. “And so, we'll be away and recharging, but I know our guys – I know we'll be on the group text with the coaches or the players and talking about plays that are happening in the games that we're watching that week.”
Sirianni then added, jokingly, “I don't know how many coaching points I'll have from my six-year-old's flag football game, but if there is something to learn, we'll learn from it.”
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It’s been a long grind playing nearly more than four straight months, dating back to preseason and training camp, before having a week off, and this weekend is the final bye of the NFL season.
Also having their first week off this season are the Colts, Dolphins, and Patriots.
The rookie walls have, presumably, come and maybe have been knocked down in that time. And make no mistake, the Eagles are getting production from everybody but one of their three sixth-round picks, linebacker JaCoby Stevens, who has been on the practice squad all season.
“I think the rookie wall is usually happening a little bit earlier if it would've happened, so I don't put much into it,” said Sirianni. “I know things like that if you talk about more, I think you kind of bring it to fruition a little bit more, so we don't really do a lot of talking about it.”
The Eagles will return from the bye with three of their final four games at home, including the next two, which is the first and only time this season they will play two straight home games.
Lincoln Financial Field hasn’t exactly been a safe haven for them with a record of just 1-4 at home.
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At 6-7 overall, though, the Eagles remain in the playoff chase,
Sirianni has proven to be one of the better head coaches hired in the offseason, if not the best, perhaps only behind Brandon Staley’s Chargers that sit at 7-5 and own a 27-24 win over Philadelphia.
The Eagles’ offense has grown as the season has gone along.
His team is 10th in the league in scoring, having scored 30-plus points six times this season, a year after Doug Pederson’s team failed to do it even once. The Eagles are 5-1 in those games.
Sirianni is 1-0 with a backup quarterback and his team never skipped. Even after after losing running back Miles Sanders for three games, the trade of Zach Ertz in mid-October, and a passing game that basically revolves around two players – DeVonta Smith and Dallas Goedert - his offense is 13th in total yards.
“I know you're not going to go like this [motioning his hand straight upwards] each day where you're just shooting up the charts, but can we just do this [motioning hand upwards diagonally] each day,” he said. “I think the teams that do just get a little bit better every day, and we have a formula of how we want to do that. It's not just a blind statement of, ‘Hey, get a little bit better every day,’ and we leave it at that.
“We have a formula of how we want to do this, and for the teams that do that, that puts you on schedule of being the best team that you can be that year with the guys and the coaches and the players that you have on that team.
“I like the progression we're on, because I do believe that that's what we've done each day, is just getting a little bit better. That's been the message, and we got some great leaders on this team that enforce that message.”
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.
