Patriots 35, Eagles 0
Q. What happened with Jalen?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, he came in, wasn't feeling great when he came in, and so we put him through pre-game warmups, and he wanted to go out there and go through warmups.
You know, he came back in and still wasn't feeling good and we evaluated him, and we just decided that it wasn't in his best interest to play with what he was feeling.
Yeah, we evaluated him and he's fine now. He's doing okay now. That's why we held him out.
Q. Did you send him home?
NICK SIRIANNI: He went to the hospital to get evaluated for his stomach. And like I said, he came back and everything is good and he's going to be okay.
Q. What kind of symptoms did he have?
NICK SIRIANNI: He had pain in his abdomen, which for a guy like that to tell us, he's a tough guy, so it must have been hurting him pretty good for him to let us know about that.
Q. Was the plan on offensive line just to start Isaac and Jordan with Jalen at quarterback?
NICK SIRIANNI: Well, no, I -- what we were going to do, we were playing that all by ear. That was going -- that was kind of up in the air of what we wanted to do.
We got some guys with a lot of experience on that offensive line, and so we talked to those guys on the right side there yesterday. They were sore. They wanted to go.
But we just thought, again, in the best interest of them, they played two games essentially this week, and we just felt like they got a lot of good work and they didn't need to go this third day in a row.
Q. After the hospital did he go home?
NICK SIRIANNI: After he was examined at the hospital, you know what, I don't know. I didn't get that. I don't know.
Q. I think it caught some of us by surprise because we saw him pre-game and he was dancing, spinning, looked like he was feeling great. You're saying he came into the building today before the pre-game and wasn't feeling good?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, correct.
Q. And then have you season enough from him, I don't know what your plans are for the Jets game, but have you seen enough from him where you would be comfortable going into Atlanta, that regular season opener, without him playing in that final game?
NICK SIRIANNI: Next week we have two practices against the Jets and two other practices, so, again, we'll evaluate how he's feeling the next couple days. Again, we get two practices against the Jets. I've said before, these are like games. Those practices, intersquad practices are like games, so he is going to be able to get two more there. I'm pretty confident that we'll get a lot of good work against the Jets.
Q. (Regarding Devonta Smith's debut.)
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, you know, looked like he was a little antsy at first. Dropped a couple balls. But -- and he was a little late with his eyes on the deep ball that Joe threw him. He made a couple plays there. That's what happens with young wideouts. They got to play and go through the ups and downs a little bit, and the pre-season is for that to happen.
He ran a good route on that return route on a third down. Thought he ran a couple other good routes, too. Again, we will look at the tape to see totally how he played, but I'm glad he got in there and was able to play a good, meaningful first half and take a couple hits and have to go against some of those tight coverage looks he had to get.
Q. What's the rationale behind playing Miles tonight after sitting him last week?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, we wanted to make sure that he got a couple carries in the preseason. Last week with how he felt last week and how he felt this week, we felt like -- last week it was our decision as a team not to play him, and this week he needs to get a couple carries, and he did. He looked good on those couple carries.
Q. At the hospital I assume they ruled out anything serious. What are they telling you now?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, just the stomach infection, stomach bug that was going on, causing some pressure in his stomach.
Q. Is he still at the hospital? You're not sure if he went home?
NICK SIRIANNI: He's not still at the hospital. I do know that. I just don't know if he came back to the stadium. I'm assuming he did to get the car. I didn't see him in the locker room.
So, yeah, that's about all the information I have on that.
Q. Would he have played if it was a regular season game, Nick?
NICK SIRIANNI: You know, I think that's hard to say. He really wanted to play. He really wanted to play, and we decided that that just wasn't in the best interest of the team and of him.
So I think that's just a hypothetical. It's hard to say. He was trying to -- he was fighting me in playing tonight. I know he would've wanted to, but that's where you got to lean on the doctors, too, and make a decision, and that's what we did.
Q. Going into the game, after you said you decided this yesterday, it was going to be just the two starters?
NICK SIRIANNI: Right, yeah, I didn't say that. I just said we were still thinking through all that. We were going to -- we were thinking they were going to probably play, and then with Jalen's thing we decided to give them a rest as well.
Q. So when you knew Jalen wasn't going to play...
NICK SIRIANNI: That's right. That's right, Jeff.
Q. You came out, second snap with 21 personnel. You've said several times that the running backs are going to be a big part of this passing game. Once the regular season starts going to see a lot more of that than you've shown in the preseason so far?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, again, one of our biggest advantages is that people don't know what we're going to do, exactly what we're going to do. We look at all the personnel groupings. We definitely want to be 11, 12, and we want to be in 21, and 13. The more things you can do and more plays -- times you can run your base plays out of different personnel sets the harder you are on a defense.
But I think we have those personnel sets to be able to do, most importantly. You don't want to do those things unless you have the guys able to do them. I think all those personnels I just mentioned, we got players in those roles that we think we can use in those scenarios?
Q. (Regarding Gainwell.)
NICK SIRIANNI: I have. Yeah, I have. I have a lot.
Q. I recognize you're not playing your top guys and you're not showing much, but in the past six quarters you've been outscored 52-nothing. How do you view the big picture?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, obviously you want to go out and win every time you take the field, and just because we're not playing our starters or showing any of our -- or some of our looks doesn't mean -- that's not an excuse. We got to execute better, play with better fundamentals, coach better, and put them in better position to make plays.
Q. You kind of emphasize competition, and then we see the emphasis on the joint practices and maybe not as much on this game. How did you reconcile that?
NICK SIRIANNI: You know, again, just every time you step out there it's not like just because of who we played or what we ran, doesn't mean we're not competing. Every time we step on the field we want to compete our tails off, and today's game was no exception.
Q. What's your message after this type of game?
NICK SIRIANNI: You know, it was that in the NFL, right, you look at our practice this week, we had a good day on Monday. Tuesday we competed pretty hard against the Patriots, and today wasn't good enough. The message was this is like a season, right. You got to stack practices on top of each other, stack quarters on top of each other, plays on top of each other, stack games on top of each other. So it's not good enough to come out, play a good game one day, play okay -- compete the next day and play a little bit better than okay and play bad the third day. That's just not going to work in this league, and that was a good example for the guys just to see that's just not what we do.
We got to come out and play every day and compete every day.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports