Eagles 22, Giants 16
Q. Nick, was the game plan limited at all with Jalen being cautious with his injury coming back?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, you know, won't get into too much of that, but, you know, sure, you didn't want to take any unnecessary risks. We had to win the game however we needed to win the game, and you saw he made some plays with his feet.
But just like they were doing a lot of different things on defense, just throwing some stuff out there, and we obviously did some different things, because we'll always take into account the health of our players.
Q. Big picture, last year to now the NFC East champions, No. 1 seed in the NFC, what did you think about going from there to here?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, you know, this team has done some special things. The records, some of the records that this team has had, you know, as far as AJ and Devonta, to have two receivers do that, the most points, the most wins most importantly, right, the most sacks, right?
Just a lot of great things that happened in the regular season. We understand that. We talked about that a lot this week. We talked a lot this week about we should be confident.
Again, do we feel like we played a great game today? No, not by any means. But this team should be confident, right? That doesn't mean cocky, it means confident with all the things that we have been able to accomplish this year.
And I just wanted them to know after those two losses in a row, like you guys have a reason to be confident. And so that's where we lie right now. Again, we won the division and that's a great accomplishment that we wanted to be able to do.
Also, we want to do one game at a time. We got a lot of bigger things in our minds right now.
Q. (Regarding the offense and Jalen.)
NICK SIRIANNI: You know, what happened -- where I thought the offense wasn't good today was in the red zone, right? We were able to move the ball. We were able to get some short fields because of our special teams with some onside kicks and the fake field goal that they did.
So more my concern would've been with the red zone plan and execution. I'll always put those together. And so Jalen's proved all year that he doesn't have to be -- he's not just a zone read quarterback. This guy up for MVP. Why? Because he's done everything, right?
And so we've won a lot of different ways this year, and so just him fighting through what he fought through to get back, you know, because still, like it's not like he was perfect out there in the sense of as far as what he felt like.
We didn't feel like there was more risk, but I know he was hurting. He was hurting bad. But that's the kind of competitor that he is. That is the kind of the person that he is and the kind of teammate and leader that he is that he was able to go out there and tough through it.
Q. Just to clarify, he was hurting today?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, of course he's still sore, right? Still sore, of course.
Q. Nick, you've talked often about how you want the season to be going like this. You've accomplished your regular season goals, but hasn't exactly looked like that over the last three weeks. How do you sort of the reconcile that as you head into the playoffs?
NICK SIRIANNI: You go in and fix the things that you think you're making mistakes on.
Again, winning pretty is not a priority. You always -- you know, I remember Larry Kehres used to say, hey, I want to make sure my friends in Cincinnati know we're heading in the right direction or whatever it was.
That's the same thing. You want to be heading in the right direction in all those different things. But playing Wilmington is a little different than playing who we just played, the Giants.
Like you're going to win some ugly. You know, you're going to lose some. Of course we know that the last two weeks we thought just wasn't up to our standard. Even today. Like there was parts of today that's not up to our standard. We wanted to set our identity of who we are and just keep plugging away at it.
But winning pretty, winning in this league is hard to do, and we won't apologize for that. It feels good to be able to get the division and our 14th win.
Q. You are for the first time in your head coaching career a division winner. I understand it's a team sport, but isn't there a special feeling of pride and significance for you to be in this situation you're in right now?
NICK SIRIANNI: Sure. I mean, I get to give him one of those hats. Get to give him one of those hats, get to give my dad at hat, my other kids, my wife one of those hats. That's cool.
Obviously that's something that is cool, right, but we just know how much bigger our goals are. I'm not going to get into the next goal is the Super Bowl. It's not. The next goal is the next day.
You don't just switch your focus of what's important to you once you get into the playoffs. You know that every game is a win-or-go-home game, and you put everything you can into that day.
Again, like I said, that's just what the best teams and the best coaches and players I've been around have that mindset. You're going to take it one day at a time. So our goals are bigger than this division. It's good to get the division because that's a good step to your total goals.
But we'll take this one day at time and work hard this week as a team to fix some of the things that are wrong. That's a big advantage, to be able to have a week where everybody else is playing for your playoff life and we got a week to work on what we need to work on.
We got a week to self-scout ourself, a week to see what has been working for us, what hasn't been working for us. That's a big deal. And so we'll take that week and be in that moment for this week, enjoy this one tonight, and we will get better from this.
Q. Speaking of this week, you will end up I think having four teams that you could potentially face. Prep-wise, so much bandwidth. How do you handle that? You just focus on self-scouting?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, that will be a big part of it. That will be a big part of it. You look at some of your old plans and stuff like that. Yeah, you just don't know what's going to happen, right? You have no idea.
And so you spend a lot of time with self-scout this week. We have good staff and we have guys that we can devote, hey, you can take this team, you can take this team, you can take this team, so you can get some of the tough, like hard work, like little minutiae things out of the way and have different guys work on different parts.
So I'm thankful because we have guys that are going to be able to do that and we trust to do that.
Q. (Regarding the conversation with Jalen) (indiscernible) and you sent him back out.
NICK SIRIANNI: That was just a little bit of miscommunication between myself and Coach Clay. That's just on me, because I was thinking if we didn't get anymore yards right there we were going to kick it. I didn't know Jalen did that, to be quite honest with you.
And so we just -- yeah, I'll figure out what happened there. You're the first one that told me that happened. I thought I just miscommunicated it. Now I can blame it on Jalen.
Q. That would be a situation maybe under different circumstances earlier in the season we would expect you to go for it.
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, you know, analytics and going for it on third or fourth down or whatever -- you know what I mean? All those different things, there is a feel to it. It's not like, hey, I know what the chart says. I'm listening to the what chart says, but there is a thing where you have to go on feel and how the game is going.
I thought our defense was playing really at that time, and so you just don't blindly -- right? There is a feel to it. There is a feel to it. In that particular case I thought that was the right decision to kick it away and not give them a short field, because I thought our defense was doing a really nice job stopping them at that point. That's why I did what I did.
Q. The red zone stuff you were talking about, Nick, and the fact that was the bigger problem, is it, you know, Jalen pulling it, doesn't that help a lot in those close areas? How important is the extra read for him? (Indiscernible.)
NICK SIRIANNI: You know, obviously it's big, yeah. It's big for everybody, not just big for Jalen. Yeah, of course we've been successful. I don't know if we still are the No. 1 team in the red zone, but I know we were going into this game, so we've done a nice job.
It was uncharacteristic of us, and everything kind of goes into play. The way we all play in the red zone and coach in the red zone has a lot of different factors into it.
But, yeah, it's big that he's going to be able to get another week rest. It was also big, in my opinion, there were some things we were all just a little rusty with Jalen being back in.
And so that was important for us to be able to get some of that out of us and fight through some of that. Just with the couple weeks off, he's got to get back into that mode of playing. And so I'm glad he went out there today and was successful and did a lot of good things. You know, we did some things we're going to want back and we're going to correct.
Q. How much has the last two weeks have gone showed how you're going to prepare, especially during the bye week, because still have a little bit of rust? (Regarding first and second round.)
NICK SIRIANNI: I think I saw Patrick Mahomes yesterday said we already won a playoff game. That's huge, already won a playoff game. That's a great perspective to have on it.
You know, every week, you're hoping every week is a learning opportunity. That's what these last three weeks have been and the week before that. You're anticipating to grow from that and correct mistakes that you don't make -- you make a mistake because you're not going to play perfect in a game. You make mistakes in a game and you're hoping that's -- I tell the guys at the beginning of the year, like I know you kind of see me as a yeller or screamer, but let me tell you when I'm really yelling and screaming is when we have repeat mistakes.
That's where I kind of really -- because that's what you want to eliminate, because it's already hard enough to win in this league. You want to learn from your mistakes, learn from the things you've done well, and grow from that.
I do believe that. I do believe we've been continuing to grow. Has everything been pretty? No. Was today pretty? No. But we're growing and we know we're growing because we're fixing mistakes.
Now, there might be new mistakes that come, yeah, but that's a new mistake and we'll fix that and get better from that one. So I think somebody said last year, like you're underground watering these plants and flowers and different stuff like that and we're trying to get better from it, so that's what we're doing.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports