Q. What is the plan with Miles this week? How are you going to get him back in? You want to see how he looks?
NICK SIRIANNI: He has to go through practice, see how he looks. We want to make sure he's healthy, ready to go. That's going to be an on going thing throughout the week. I'll have more answers for you on Friday on that. Just want to get him out there, see how he looks pretty much tomorrow and Friday, the next day.
Q. Could he play this week?
NICK SIRIANNI: I definitely think, yeah. If he looks healthy, he's definitely one of our better players. He's definitely going to go if he looks healthy.
Again, though, I just want to see how it looks this week. Like I said, I'll have more answers for you on Friday.
Q. I assume you have to figure out a way, if Miles plays, to incorporate with him with Jordan and Boston. Will that be tough for you?
NICK SIRIANNI: I think, like, when you have some guys that have been running the ball well, that's a good problem to have. It speaks to the depth we have here in the running back room in particular. So a great job by Howie and his staff of getting the players in here and having depth.
We know it's a long season, a 17-game season. You're going to have some bumps and bruises throughout the way. It's important when the guys that step in for the starters are ready to go. I think that Jordan and Boston and Kenny have done a good job stepping in, filling that role with Miles' absence. Again, I think that speaks to the depth of the runningback room.
Q. Why are the Saints so effective at stopping the run?
NICK SIRIANNI: Really stout up front. They're really good in that front seven. I'm not taking anything away from the back end either because they're good there, too. They just got a lot of good pieces there.
I've always had a lot of respect for Dennis Allen defenses. When I was in the AFC West, he was in the AFC West a lot of those years, as well. His scheme and his ability to coach the technique to the guys and how the guys play for him has always really stood out to me. I just have a lot of respect for him as a coach.
Anytime you get that combination of good players, good coach, the defense is going to look good. That's a stout front seven. They're physical. But we're physical, too. We're going to have to match their physicality. They're going to have to match our physicality.
Q. A lot of times there are collaborative decisions in an organization. Playing Miles Sanders, is that purely coaching?
NICK SIRIANNI: Like everything, everything is collaborative. We talk through everything. We're going to talk through it, Howie and I are going to talk through it, the trainers are going to talk through it with us. We're going to get all the information available to us to make a best decision, what's best for Miles and what's best for the team.
Q. There are different philosophies as far as whether a player's injuries should affect their role when they come back. That a player could lose his job basically. Is that something you've thought about? What is your philosophy on that?
NICK SIRIANNI: Again, I know how good of a player that Miles Sanders is. Looking forward to getting him back in there, getting him carries. Just a really good job by Jordan and Boston and Kenny, like I said, of filling in.
I think it's different based off of different situations. Like if Miles is healthy and ready to go, he's our starter. But that doesn't mean that every situation equals the same thing, right? Every situation, you have to be able to adjust, do things, and every situation has different circumstances and different thought processes behind it.
Q. Saints came in last year later in the season, did a good job running the ball. How much do you look at that tape and see if there's something you can use from last year's template?
NICK SIRIANNI: You guys would be very surprised how much we look at and what we look at, all the different avenues. We're looking for every angle we can have in every different thing.
We're going to look at last year's Eagles versus Saints game, the 2019 Eagles versus Indy game, the Colts. We looked at the 2020 Chargers versus Saints game. We're doing our homework and looking at all different avenues.
That doesn't mean just the games that Shane coached in or I coached in or the Eagles have played in, right? We'll look at everything. How do they play, how do they play different types of wide receivers, different types of quarterbacks. We have just this library. Our video department does such a great job of having so much information for us. There's a ton of information, but it's our job to sort through it all, find the things that are going to benefit us.
I've definitely looked at that game as well as a bunch of different things. I'm not opposed to looking at Broncos versus Chargers tape or Broncos versus Chiefs tapes when back when, Chargers versus Raiders with Dennis Allen. We'll look at everything and leave no stone unturned.
Q. How do you figure out how defenses are going to play Jalen specifically?
NICK SIRIANNI: You try to look at styles of similar quarterbacks, like I was saying. You look at the group as a whole, see what they're doing in different situations like that. You always want to find different styles, similar styles of quarterbacks, and similar styles of offense to you. That's always on our radar, things that we are looking at, things that we are thinking through with that.
Q. You watch the Saints' defense, how important is Malcolm Jenkins to what they do?
NICK SIRIANNI: He's an aggressive player. I know what a good leader he was here. But you still see him playing at a high level. Like I said, he sticks out on the tape as being aggressive. He's an aggressive player that we'll have to know where he is in the run game and in the pass game.
Q. With how well the offensive line has been performing, how good is Lane Johnson performing since he came back?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, Lane had a phenomenal game. He's played really well since he's been back. That game that he had the other day, he just was really physical in that game, was able to open up some lanes.
There was a couple cases where they were bringing an extra guy off the edge, and Lane was able to account for two guys in one play, which is pretty amazing because of the movement that he was getting on the linebacker. I know you guys probably saw that, where he got up to the second level, threw the guy to the ground. I just love the energy that Lane plays with.
He's a great player. Everybody can feed off that energy that he brings. So it's great to have him out there. He's been playing really good football.
Q. What is your message or team for this week?
NICK SIRIANNI: We talked about today, since the guys were off on Monday, we really did go back today and talk through the game a little bit. We just rehashed the game. Wasn't as many clips as what we normally would rehash.
Again, it's the same message: How are we growing today? Today is going to be a day we're going to be walk-through. We're later in the season. We have a late bye. I want to take care of these guys' bodies, make sure they're ready to be 100% fresh on Sunday.
We'll be walk-through today. The reason I'm even bringing that up is because the message is that we're not going to be out there running around and moving around, but we need to make sure we're getting better in the sense of let's make sure we're mentally ready to go here.
Having what we call, hey, you're going to the walk-through, you're full speed to the snap in walk-through. That means your mind is working, break the huddle in the same aspect, your mind is working full speed, boom, the snap happens, now we go through a walk-through.
Just a reminder of how important walk-throughs are to us, being ready mentally. Hey, your bodies are going to be ready mentally because we're going to take this week.
Q. (Indiscernible) specifically as your run game coordinator, what is his fingerprint?
NICK SIRIANNI: Again, he just has a lot of different experiences here, right? He's had a lot of different experiences with Jalen, right, as far as last year. Stout does just a really good job. The rest of the staff, Jason Michael, Shane, Brian Johnson, Kevin Patullo, Jemal Singleton, Aaron, it's a collaborative work.
Coach Stout kind of leads up that run game division. We talk through everything. He goes through and just kind of sees the different ideas, different things like that. It's good to have him because he's a really good mind that's had a lot of success running the football, whether it's at the college level or at the pro level. They've had a lot of success here. The Eagles have had a lot of success here running the football.
Stout is a great game planner. He's a great position coach. Again, when you have guys like that on your staff to lean on, that's a huge advantage.
Q. Jalen has talked about it's going to take time, we're building something here. When you're coming off a win, going into this week, how much does that help his confidence and the team's confidence overall?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, I think confidence is a great thing. But you can't get overconfident, you can't rely only on confidence. You have to rely on your preparation of what you're doing and getting better every single day to put yourself in a position.
Like I've said, say this all the time: We have to do our work today to put ourselves in the position to win. That also goes in the sense of, yeah, we did what we did last week, but we have to do our job today to put ourselves in position to be confident on Sunday.
So confidence is built, in my opinion, yes, from what you've done in the past, but really how you prepare in the week and know your opponent and have your body ready for your opponent.
Q. How would you guys kind of squash the penalty problem, especially on offense?
NICK SIRIANNI: What we really talk a lot about, I think this isn't 100% because we've always talked about penalties, we talk about hitting yardage a lot, how we need to win that battle of hitting yardage. We've really emphasized it the entire year, even they beginning of the year, These guys don't talk about penalties at all. I imagine that's what the sentiment was.
We've been emphasizing it all year. I think when you emphasize something like penalties or protecting the football, like our offense does, taking away the football, whatever it is, it's the same as everything, you might not see the fruits of your labor right away. But eventually, right, it will stick out and it will show.
Again, when you're dead last in penalties like we were, we took even more drastic steps to make sure that we were emphasizing it even more. But it was something that's always been at the forefront.
Again, not always going to see the results right away. That's been something that throughout the process, like the work that we put in weeks one through six, wherever we were when we were bad in penalties, that's starting to show, and the work we put in from six to ten, right? It's just the same, put your head down work, grind, over and over again to put yourself in a position to improve.
Q. What were the drastic steps?
NICK SIRIANNI: Again, it was just more we still had our process of what we did, talking about penalties, but when you had a penalty in practice, instead of talking through it with the coaches and the coach's meeting in the morning, we showed it in the team meeting all together so everybody kind of saw that.
Maybe sometimes on a Monday meeting you would be like, Okay, I'm going to talk about this penalty, this penalty. We showed all those ones instead. A little bit more of what we were already doing I guess to say.
Q. Jalen Hurts, last year in New Orleans was his first start. You weren't here. You've seen the tape. How do you think he's different as a quarterback today?
NICK SIRIANNI: What I really saw, I've continued to see him make strides there again. I don't know what he was asked to do all the time at the line of scrimmage. I talked to Jalen, but I don't know exactly what he was asked to do at the line of scrimmage.
What you see here now is making great checks at the line of scrimmage to get in and out of plays. That's the development of a quarterback you want to see because he's your coach on the field.
I mentioned this the other day, the play that he had to Goedert where he stepped up in the pocket, forget New Orleans last year, three or four weeks ago he's going to run that football. He might get 10, shake the guy off and get 15, might get 20. He got 24 when he stepped in the pocket.
I've seen him with that play in the pocket go up with one hand, saw him push up with two hands and find the ball. He doesn't know where those hands are coming. That's the ball security thing we've continued to emphasize, he's continued to emphasize getting better at.
There's a lot of examples of how he's different since I've been here. It's a tribute to Jalen first and foremost that he's the type player that wants to get better, that wants to be great, that wants to be the best. He's willing to do anything he can to accomplish that. Then his coaches as well, Brian Johnson is a great coach, Shane does a good job with him as well in the quarterback meetings.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports