Q. Jalen has been over 73 percent accuracy three straight games, no Eagles quarterback has ever done that. His accuracy each year of his career has gone up as you know. What's gone into specifically that aspect of his game, the accuracy that he's shown this year and especially over the last few games?
NICK SIRIANNI: Accuracy is not only where you place the ball and the ball being complete, but also you going to the right place with the football, right. You could have an accurate throw and not go to the right place with the football and that be an incompletion and not do it in a timely fashion whether that be a tipped ball or a sack. So I think it's twofold, it's just him getting more and more comfortable with the plays that he's running and that he likes, and knowing where to go with the football accurate and going there in a timely fashion and doing so with good fundamentals and delivering the ball with accuracy. So it's just those two components, and he's doing a nice job of that.
Q. With Dallas being with his injury right now, what's your thoughts and is there any consideration to going outside the organization?
NICK SIRIANNI: We'll always look for the best ways to make this team better and see what -- obviously you're limited as far as any trades or anything like that. We are hopeful Dallas will make a good, clean recovery, and be back soon, you know, when he's ready to go back. But we'll always be looking to Howie. Howie always does a great job looking to improve the football team. So we like the guys that we have on this roster. We are excited about them. We're excited about them to get an opportunity. There's different ways that you can supplement not having Dallas, also. It doesn't just fall on Jack, Grant. It just doesn't -- Albert. It just doesn't fall on those three guys, right. You can supplement it sometimes we different personnel groupings as well. We feel like we have some good options. We are obviously not into game planning yet. We did a big review of our game today and then tomorrow will be self-scout tough. We'll work into game plan later in the week where we'll think more about that. But we know we have options not only with the guys in the room but also guys that are not in the room out of different personnel groupings.
Q. After reviewing the strange of three-and-outs near the end of the game, what was your takeaways?
NICK SIRIANNI: You know, one, when you're backed up, you're backed up on the minus, minus one-yard line. You're limited, obviously, in the things that you can do. So the backed up one, you know, we gave ourselves some breathing room on the first play with a sneak. We were a little off on the next play. Then just didn't convert on the screen that we threw on the last play. You know, we felt good about all those. Gave ourselves some breathing room to give Braden an opportunity to punt the ball back to him. The other one is a situation, we're in four-minute. We're trying to get them to burn their time-outs, so we are being pretty conservative. I think as that drive started, as we look at it, I'm good if we give them the ball back with under 40 seconds or under 50 seconds inside the 20 with no time-outs. When you just look the context of the way that the plays happen, it's easy to say, hey, three three-and-outs. We like to keep those drafts going? Of course we would. We would like to convert and of course we would like to keep a coronavirus going in a four-minute but those are played the way they are played because of the situation of the game and that we are in and where the ball is on the field. I would say, really, on that one, the one three-and-out, we've just got to do a better job putting the guys in positions to succeed and we have to do a better job executing. Like that's always going to be that when we have a three-and-out any time in the game, which is the one that we had -- that we had an incomplete pass to AJ on the last play. AJ, it looked like AJ had a hard time seeing that ball for whatever reason on that one but I lying the aggressive play call by Brian and aggressiveness of Jalen on that. That's been a high percentage completion play for us on that. We've been pretty successful on those go balls. Just didn't work out on that particular one. But a one-on-one with A.J. Brown and the tear that he's been on on a vertical route, I'll take that. I'll take that any day of the week. We didn't execute and on that particular one, for a flukey reason.
Q. I don't know if you mentioned it, what happened on AJ running into DeAndre and the fumble?
NICK SIRIANNI: I didn't mention it. Yeah, just a little bit of an execution error. I'll leave it at that. We have to coach it better, and we just had a little bit of an execution error on that particular one. We ran that play a couple times in the game. Didn't have an execution error on those earlier but we've just got to make sure in different scenarios that we do a good job of reminding them on those things. And so again, that can't happen in that particular case. We've got to coach it better. We've got to execute it better.
Q. Slay at the end of the game kind of said that he wanted to take C.J., no matter what. How do you take that when you have veteran players that want to take ownership of the game, and how do you obviously filter that, because you can't just let people do whatever they want. So how does that work?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, I mean, there's different things. You can't just play one coverage. You can't just put one guy on somebody. You'll be figured out fast there. Obviously admire the fact that Slay wants to go against the best, because he's one of the best. So you admire that.
But you've got to do -- you've got to think about the team and what's best for the team in different sets because again if it was just a man and you just played man the entire time, then maybe you could do that.
But obviously there's a lot of different things, there's a lot of different coverages that go into it, and it takes a lot of different reps. It's going to take a lot of reps to execute different things that, you know, different types of coverages.
So admire his willingness and want-to to do that. You know, we know we're on the drawing board trying to figure out better ways to take away a guy like cd, and we'll get better at that as we continue on through this year.
Q. On that, where do you see the nickel position going forward? You get Robey back, maybe in a couple weeks, and how do you where is your confidence in Eli in that position and how do you evaluate that going forward right now?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, we feel like we have options. Again we have to put the guys in position to succeed, and then the guys have to go out and execute. And so that's a team thing of how we do that.
We have confidence. The reason Eli and Sidney were out there yesterday is because we had confidence in them to do the job. Again, did the stat sheet look pretty with 375 yards passing? No. But did the scoreboard look pretty? Yeah. To hold a team like that to six points in the second half is pretty darned good, and to 23 points in the game is pretty good.
And so you know, then we are excited when Bradley gets back and we know he's a big-time player and we're excited that he's on this team and excited that, you know, we have a chance to get him back this year.
So got confidence in the group, and we feel like we have options at the group. Again, Howie has done a great job of bringing in depth through the midst of some things where we've had some injuries at this defensive back position.
We'll continue to get guys ready. Guys will continue to get themselves ready, and I'm comfortable with the group moving forward in the season.
Q. Any idea why the run game has not been clicking like we are accustomed to seeing, and how big of a part will that be of the self-scout this week?
NICK SIRIANNI: I think the run game is executing differently than what you've seen. Again, when you just look at a stat book, you're not going to get that information exactly the way it is, right. So I mean, we run a jet sweep to DeAndre that goes for 22 yards; that counted as a pass. That's a run, right. That's a run. It's just the way we gave them the football. Some teams are under center and turn it around and hand it to the guy. Some teams that are gun teams and catch it and pitch it forward. For the teams that catch it and pitch it forward, they get pass yards. For the teams that turn around and hand it, they get run yards. It's a style of what you are in your offense as far as in you're a hundred team or an under team.
You look at the other teams, the explosive play to Dallas, well, it counts as a pass. Well, I've got it but it's an RPO. It's an RPR. When you do that, you're reading an end and then some teams play -- some teams read it, and I don't want to get too much into the scheme of it but some teams read it and they play option football and some teams read it and play pass-forward football. Those are runs.
I don't agree that -- with your -- I know you're just asking the question. I don't agree with it, and because there's more to the run game, like those numbers, than just what the stats say. And so that's how I'm kind of answering that. You guys can take that, I think I've done a good job explaining that and I don't want to get too far into that, the scheme things, but yeah, that's how we see it.
Q. I just can't to clarify. So you're okay with the way the running game is going right now?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah.
Q. I was wondering what you thought of the way Tyler played and assuming that Cam is back when you guys return against the Chiefs, how much do you think this experience will help him going forward?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, good question. I think he played pretty good. Obviously he's going to want his place back. A couple times he got matched up with some different guys, and you've got to go through some of those adversities to continue to grow as a player. I thought he played a good game, though, being his first start, being a rookie, going against a really good defense, I thought he played a good game.
Obviously any time you get reps, that's beneficial for you. And he did a good job. He's in between Jason and Lane, so that obviously helps. But that was a good front that we went against and I thought he did a lot of good things, and I thought he got more and more comfortable as the game progressed.
We are going to need all hands on deck continuing ongoing into this next game versus Kansas City. So we'll need Cam. We'll need Tyler. We'll need Sua. Glad we have the depth that we have and look forward to them continuing to grow as players.
Q. I know earlier in the season we talked quite a bit about the red zone struggles that the team has had but over the last four games or so, the offense has scored on over 70 percent of your trips down there. Why is the offense executing so much better in that area? How much of it is execution and how much of it is play calling or something else?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, we've worked hard at that. Any time you're in the lower portion of the league in anything, it kind of pisses us off, right. We know that we have to make strides to be the offense that we need to be and that's in any scenario. Like we don't want to be in the bottom parts of the league, especially something as important as the red zone football in that situation because we know that means points. So today, a couple weeks ago we were 27th and today we were 13th. That's a hell of strides that we've made as a team to make sure we are putting the ball in the end zone, and we needed every one of those points yesterday. So a great job by our guys yesterday to execute.
And so any time we're that -- it always starts with, are we putting the guys in position to make plays. We made a few, without getting too much into it, we made a few philosophical changes of what were doing down there which seem to have helped and our guys are doing a great job of executing when we get down there. We have good players down there and they are making really good plays. AJ and Julio, making unbelievable plays.
Again, we have all these weapons that we have to make sure we are putting in positions to succeed. Like I said, the guys have done a great job the past couple of weeks of making this big jump in our red zone offense getting better. Because like I said, we needed all those points, so good job to the guys.
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