Q. Hey, Nick. Good morning. In a game like this where you're facing one of the greatest players of all time and the reigning Super Bowl champs, do you have to kind of guard against your younger players changing the way they play and maybe play differently?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, that's been our message right from the beginning. Regardless of who we're playing is play within yourself, play within your game.
And that's going to be -- and that will be enough. Because I think when you press, when you're playing -- if it's a Thursday night -- whether it's a Thursday night game, whether it's a playoff game, like, when you press like that, that's not what you want.
You want to play the same way every single time. And that's been our message from the beginning. That's been our message this week, as well. Just play within yourself, know your role, play within yourself and good things will happen.
Q. Hi, Nick. Good morning. I was wondering how this week has gone for you now that you're almost there, you're almost at game day. As far as preparation goes, did you have a firm plan coming in? And I wanted to know how many adjustments, because it's your first time doing this as a head coach, the short week stuff.
NICK SIRIANNI: Sure. You know, I know it's my first time as a head coach doing it, but it's clearly not our first time since we've been in the NFL.
You know, just like when you develop your coaching philosophy, you take things from the past what you have done and you twist it and tweak it the way you want it.
So I've been in some good places where we had good plans for Thursday night and the preparation felt right as an offensive coordinator, the preparation felt right and we kind of followed that mode with making a little slight adjustments.
And so, I feel really good about the preparation that we did and what we -- you know, the situations we put ourselves in through the week.
It started to be -- truthfully honest with you, it started with Sunday night at my house with some coaches coming over, right?
When we landed is when we -- we landed, I brought some of the coaches over to my house, kind of like in that -- kind of like in that old high school football thing, like, Hey, come over to my house, let's go and let's start planning a little bit.
And the coaches that weren't calling the game, they did planning -- you know, they did a lot of work beforehand. I won't say a lot, but they had a big chunk of it done beforehand to be able to prep me and show me some things and to catch me up.
And so, it was kind of cool because that first part -- definitely that Sunday, it was cool. Because it reminded me of guys coming over -- coaches coming over to my dad's house or my parents' house when I was a kid to game plan on that Saturday after a Friday night win.
My brother, in college, he'll bring some of the coaches over to his house on Sunday to prep just because he -- so it was finally my opportunity to do that. And I kind of thought that was cool.
Q. Hey, Nick, following up on that: How many guys were over at the house? Did you have pizza? How late did you go? And, you know, what was kind of the mood of that? Is it, like, lighthearted when you're in the office? Would you still get as much done? How did it go?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, they set us up pretty good at our homes, like, our video guys, the video department, led by Pat Dullen. He has us all set up at the house. So we had everything we needed there.
I didn't get any pizzas. You know, I had some -- I think the kids had -- I think -- Shane might have had some Cheez-Its that were left over from my son's lunch.
But it -- yeah, and I mean, after you win, you feel good, you're talking through it. We had the Chiefs/Bills game on in the background on at my house.
And so, you know, it was lighter but it was just -- it was lighter but it was just -- everything was the same in the sense that, you know, it was just going through the process that we normally go through. And it was a couple hours.
But you know what, Rube, that's a good idea. And I'm going to put that on our schedule to make sure next time we have the pizzas ready, whatever the beverage of choice is for the guys, we have all that ready, as well.
And so, I've done it a couple different ways. We did it one year in Indy where we stayed -- we played a home game -- we, obviously, were away.
But we played a home game and we stayed in the locker room and let the traffic go through and we stayed in the locker room for about three hours on that Sunday. And that -- they -- Frank did have pizzas.
That's where he's better than me on that one. We stayed in the locker room, let the traffic go, and then went. But, you know, it was fun, we had a good time with it.
Q. Hey, Good morning, Nick. If Dallas is not cleared to play by tomorrow night, does Zach Ertz go back to taking the every down role or do you have to adjust the offensive game plan? And also, how's Derek Barnett coming along?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, as far as, you know, with Zach, Zach's ready to go. You know, we have two really good tight ends. And Zach will be ready to go. And Jack Stoll, we'll look forward to Jack Stoll being able to play, as well.
And so, yeah, we're excited about the opportunities for guys go if Dallas can't go. And then Derek, yeah, we expect Derek to be up and ready to roll.
Q. Hey, Nick Good morning. What are some of your teaching points for -- what are your teaching points for Jalen Hurts on zone reads and RPOs when it comes to him keeping the ball and running?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, read every play independently, don't get caught up on what you've seen on tape. We talk about what we've seen on tape, but knowing that he's a different type of player and that teams will play you a little bit differently than what you expect.
And so, really, read every play independently of whoever you're reading. Just make sure you go through your read just like you would in a pass play, knowing that things can adjust.
And then, also, I think Jalen has a good sense of this, anyway, of how to get down and how to not take big hits. Where I don't know if you see that with a lot of quarterbacks -- there's a lot of quarterbacks in the league that don't know how to take that hit on a zone read.
And I think he naturally has good instincts to look at do that. But that's always -- you know, we don't want him to -- what we would say to a running back or a tight end on the -- they catch a ball on the boundary and they have the ball on the boundary, to put it in that outside arm, keep it away from the defense and use your stiff arm or play pound into them. You know, those are kind of the words that we would use.
And, obviously, we don't want Jalen doing that. So taking care of himself, taking care of his body. Because we know that that's part of our offense and we don't want him to take big hits on that.
So those are two major coaching points that we give him, Jeff, that we think that we really stand by.
Q. Have you found that more teams are not using the unblocked defender as the one to account for Jalen?
NICK SIRIANNI: I'm sorry, say that one more time.
Q. Have you noticed that they're not using an -- you know, the typical edged defender as the unblocked defender, you know, they have a linebacker --
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, teams are always going to change up the way they do that. And that's -- you know, for sure. You know, sometimes there's going to be that defensive end, sometimes they're going to scrape the linebacker over to -- pinch the D-end, pinch the linebacker over the top, take the extra safety and put him down there.
When you're good at that stuff and when you have a quarterback -- you're good at that because who your quarterback is, you're going to see the different looks. So, yes, we've seen all the different looks that you can get.
And, you know, that's similar to my experience with a good running team. When you're a good running team, you're going to get unscouted looks, as well. You're going to get different fronts, guys off the perimeter, guys off perimeter both sides. You're going to see defensive-end stunts in the run game.
And that's no different here than in the zone read game. Teams aren't going to say, I'm just doing this and that's it. They're going to show you different presentations and different looks.
And that's our job as coaches to know -- you know, we know the different looks that a defense goes through to stop the zone read or stop a quarterback run. And we just have to be ready to adjust when they have those different things with our little adjustments, as well.
So, you know, as football is, it's a game of chess and you're just matching move to move as the defense goes.
Q. Good morning, Nick. With the way that the team kind of battled back against the Panthers, we've seen young teams kind of fall apart early when stuff snowballs. But I was just curious with connect being one of your key principals, how do you think that's gone within your locker room, within your coaching staff through five games?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, good question, Mike. You know, I think, like, again, that connect thing that we talk about, that's why it's the very first point of our very first core value.
You'll fight a little bit harder even though you think you can't fight any harder. But you'll fight a little bit harder for the guys you care about and love.
And that's definitely what you see and that's why we try to build that as much as we possibly can. Because you don't want to let anyone done. Offense doesn't want to let defense down, defense doesn't want to let offense down. Same thing with special teams. Coaches don't want to let players. Players don't want to let coaches down.
And so, you know, you just find yourself fighting and digging just with every inch of yourself to be able to give everything you got to the guy across from you -- or pardon me, the guy next to you and then the rest of the sidelines.
So, yeah, it was awesome to see, you know, in Carolina, just the fight. And that's a tribute to our leadership on our team, as well. Our captains, our veteran players.
Even our young guys, some of the young guys that we have that, you know, just -- they have good leadership, leadership ability to keep it, you know, one play mentality, dog mentality, move on to the next play.
And so, that was, obviously, a good win for us and it showed a lot of character and a lot of character that this team has because of the players that we have on this team.
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