Eagles 31, 49ers 7
Q. You'll be coaching in the Super Bowl. How does that feel?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, pretty awesome. This is something you dream about your whole life, and like I said to the guys, we've all been dreaming about it, whether we were dreaming about it when you were two, 10, 14, 18 or when you got in the NFL, this is something we all dream about, and we get to do it because we did it better than anybody else in the NFC this year. It's pretty special. Fans were awesome. Atmosphere was unbelievable. When you guys go into our indoor, there's always that picture in the back part of it of the 2017 NFC Championship game, and it's just the electricity of the stadium. We're looking forward to getting another picture up there of this special moment that we had.
Looking forward to celebrating this with loved ones and then moving on and getting this next one.
Q. You talked about football intelligence since day one when you got here. When DeVonta makes that play and immediately starts calling for no-huddle, is that something that you teach or impress upon him, and does he have the authority to do that, you guys just get to the line --
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, football intelligence, smart players do smart things, and he did a smart thing right there, made an unbelievable play. I don't know if he caught it or not. I haven't seen the TV copy. He didn't catch it? Then that was even better of a play.
But yeah, we talk a lot, situational football is not just 3rd down and red zone and two-minute. It's not just those things. It's the situations that happen within the game. That particular thing is the situation that happens within the game, DeVonta has done that. In fact, the very first game we had here against Atlanta, Zach Ertz did the same thing.
Again, smart players do smart things, and we've had a couple of those, and our guys are -- we talk a lot about it, our guys are locked in, and this is a special group of guys.
Q. Is there a particular instance that you've talked about in practice where maybe you know you didn't make the catch, run a play quickly --
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, that's exactly what we're saying. That's a situation that pops up. There's situations that pop up, like I said, in all these different scenarios, and that's one of them that we work, that we talk about. Going into our Giants game last week, we saw the Giants actually do that in their playoff game against Minnesota.
Now, sometimes you're going to hurry up and run a play, and it's going to be -- it wasn't going to be a question to it, but if there's any question in your mind -- we go no-huddle anyway, but if there's any question in your mind, you go, and DeVonta did a great job. I'm going to say he caught it, though, because that was a very sweet catch. But DeVonta did a great job and Jalen did a great job of getting the guys to the line of scrimmage and running the play.
Q. You were 2-5 in the middle of last season, you guys were getting a lot of heat. Did you imagine this is where you would be a year and a half later?
NICK SIRIANNI: Honestly, when you think about the present and only about the present, you don't think about what's going to happen two years down the road. You don't. You literally say -- and I think that was the biggest lesson of being 2-5 is hey, we've got a big hole to climb out of, and if I look at this mountain and I say to myself, I've got to climb this mountain, it's going to feel like too much of a task.
But if I look at that mountain that we were in and say, we've just got to climb this part tomorrow and we've got to climb this part tomorrow, you don't think about it. You just think about the part you climbed today. I think that's what that teaches you. You don't think about what could happen two years down the road, you just put the work in each time over and over and over again, and you know what, sometimes you get the result and sometimes you don't, and I'm just happy we got the result of where we are right now because the guys have just put their head down and worked day by day, and now we're in this spot, and we're going to go and give it our best shot here in a couple weeks.
Q. You kind of prided yourself on the physicality of this team. You kind of set the tone with the strip sack. Obviously you never hope anybody gets injured, but that completely changes the game. You talk about game records on defense, you kind of --
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, you want to try to make the quarterback feel as uncomfortable as possible with everything, whether that's the fans and them making it loud, whether that's disguising the coverages or whether that's hitting him. You don't ever want anybody to get dinged or get hurt, and I hope he's okay, but it definitely did change the game.
But those guys' job is to hit the quarterback, affect the game, and they sure did that today.
Q. When you get to this point, you obviously don't need motivation, but it seemed like the players were playing with a sense of they felt disrespected. Did you get that from them?
NICK SIRIANNI: I just think that we wanted to come out and make sure that we -- we know how mentally and physically tough we are. Physically tough, toughness is one part is about physicality, and the other part is about mentally tough. We got mentally tough guys that have been through ups and downs, not only on the football field but in life.
When you're able to withstand the storm and just keep fighting, that not only sets you up well in life because we know how life is with the ups and downs, but it also prepares you for moments like this where you know it's going to be a slugfest back and forth.
I wouldn't say we felt disrespected by any means, but we wanted to come out here and let ourselves know, and we knew we knew, but let everybody know how physically tough we are and how mentally tough we are. No matter what was going to happen in that game, I know these guys in this locker room were going to keep fighting and keep ripping it because they've been through life's ups and downs, and they were built for this.
Q. Going for it on 4th and 1 early in the game, what was the thought process there?
NICK SIRIANNI: You know, we have confidence. When you go for it on 4th down, you put yourself in those scenarios all week. We have so many meetings about that, of what we're going to do in these scenarios, calls we might call, what we would call if we've already called that and everything like that.
You put yourself through those calls, but at the end of the day, you make the decision because you trust the people that are out there doing the job, and I trust Jason Kelce. I trust Isaac. I trust Landon. I trust Jalen to go do what we did right there in that scenario.
Q. When Purdy came back in the game, what was your sense of how limited they were offensively? How long did it take you to realize that they really couldn't --
NICK SIRIANNI: He had the thing on his arm, so we figured he probably couldn't throw it down the field, but you don't really, truly know. We knew they liked to do some screens in that scenario because that's a short pass. We knew they were going to run it to try to keep him out of some danger there.
I've got a lot of respect for Brock that he came back in and fought, a ton of respect for him because I know obviously he was hurting bad, and that's what my guys -- all my former teammates over at Iowa State said about the guy. I know that kid is a winner, and he obviously showed great toughness today to come back in when his team was in a bind.
But you don't know quite until you see the game plan unfolding a little bit. I think once you get them in 3rd and mediums and stuff like that and they're not pushing it down the field, I think that kind of gives you an indication.
But yeah, so it took a little bit of time but not too long.
Q. Got a chance to have the football first after San Francisco deferred, second playoff game, second time you went right down and scored. What's it mean to set the tone right there?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, it means I know I'm going to answer questions for the next two weeks from you guys that say, are you going to take the ball to start it off? Are you going to do what you did in the -- each game is a little bit different, but it was great to set the tone there and get the lead, get the lead and put them behind.
Our guys did a great job. It was a big-time 4th down conversion by DeVonta, great situational football to get up there and run a play, and a really great job by our offensive line just kind of caving it in to run it in. I don't know what down that was, but yeah, great job by them to finish that off.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports