HOWIE ROSEMAN: Appreciate everyone's patience. Just wanted to walk through why we're here a little bit later than normal. Played Monday night. The game ended Tuesday. I think we left the locker room Tuesday morning, and just looking around the locker room at our players, at our staff, I felt like there was a kind of sadness about the way the season ended. There was kind of a shell-shocked feeling that was going on.
I think what we do a good job of is kind of communicating, figuring out the reasons for things, how we can get better, and so we gave everyone Tuesday off, and then Coach and I and our coaches met with all our players. We had exit interviews. That lasted for a couple days.
Obviously the snowstorm on Friday, a lot of people were out of the office. The office was closed.
Then we went into the weekend, and like we do, tried to figure out a plan to get better. I apologize for the delay, and we're here now.
Q. Nick, can you walk us through the decision to remove Brian Johnson as your offensive coordinator, and did you talk to Jalen considering their relationship when you made that decision?
NICK SIRIANNI: Sure, we evaluated our season at the end of the year. Obviously are going to be in constant evaluation of this. We did what we thought was best at the time, and I can't say enough good things about Brian, though. He's a great football coach, and he's going to have another opportunity to lead an offense, and I will miss him.
Some of the things that we want to do as a team is grow in a lot of different areas and grow in some of the guys that have been in here with me, that have been there with me for a while. So it's about coming up with fresh ideas and doing some things different.
That's exactly where we are right now. Brian being at that position, unfortunately he's the one that is leaving at this particular time. But I can't tell you how much I appreciate him as a coach.
We've had a lot of success here in the past three years, and Brian has contributed a lot to that. But like I said, it's now about bringing in fresh ideas, some different thoughts than what a lot of the guys -- sometimes when you're with a group of guys, like we've been together for three years, that group of guys, but in addition to that, it was a couple of the other guys that I've been with for multiple years, as well.
Just wanted to bring in some fresh ideas, and that's where we are with that.
Q. With those fresh ideas, how willing are you to change some of the structure of your offense if you see fit?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, that's exactly what you're saying, exactly what we're talking about. It's just about putting the players in the best positions to succeed but doing things differently at times, too.
But there's going to be things that whoever the new coordinator is, there's going to be things that they bring that are going to be fresh ideas for us to help our players grow and help our players play at the top level, and there have been some things that we've done really well on offense, too, in the past that you'll mesh in some of that together, as well, I think with some of the success that we've had these last three years and the things that our guys do well.
So I'm excited about that, the new ideas meshing with some of the old ideas. We'll see how that continues to go as we go through our off-season process and where we land with that.
But yeah, obviously when you get -- to me, we got a little bit stale on offense by the end, the end of the year, and these ideas and this new person coming in is meant to take away the staleness and add the value of what they're adding to the offense.
Q. It'll be your scheme and you'll have final authority on what is run?
NICK SIRIANNI: You know, it's our scheme. It'll be our scheme of what we're doing.
Again, I don't know exactly what that will look like yet. We're bringing in a guy to bring in new ideas, to do the things that he's done in the past. We're going through an extensive search to get that right person.
But it would be crazy not to add some of the things that we've done in the past here, as well. I don't know if it's going to be 95 percent this -- we're not there yet. We're working on getting the best guy in here for the job and a guy who has a vision, a guy who's going to call the plays, a guy who's going to be able to coach the quarterback in the same sense there.
It's just about getting the right guy, and then we'll decide where that goes, but I'm hiring him to do a job and to be in charge of the offense.
Q. On the defensive side of the ball, what are you looking for in your new defensive coordinator, and are you looking for somebody to be a little more aggressive or are you still married to the Vic Fangio type of scheme?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, we're looking for the guy who is the best person for the job, and that can be -- there's many different systems that work. There's many different systems that work well. We're looking for the guy who's going to be best for the job that can utilize the skills that our players have so they can play at their highest level.
A lot of good candidates there, as well, and that's what we're going through right now as we speak.
Q. If your offensive coordinator is going to be in charge of the offense and the defensive coordinator is going to be in charge of the defense, what is your role going to be?
NICK SIRIANNI: The head coach of the football team.
Q. What does that entail? How does it change?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, I guess it would be very similar to what's going on right now. Does that mean I'll sit more into defensive meetings at times? Maybe. Instead of always being in an offensive meeting, maybe I go to a defensive meeting here and there. But my job is to be the head coach of the team, not the head coach of the offense, not the head coach of the defense, not the head coach of the special teams, but be the head coach of the football team. So that's building the culture. That's making sure the culture is working with our five core values, are taking every day at a time. We're not coming up with new core values. We may shuffle where things are that are important and the most important, but that's diving into that, building the culture, having a relationship with the guys on the football team because I know when I have that connection with the guys on the football team, that's when things are -- that's when the culture is working and working at a high level, and that's where our connection with the players and their connection with each other works well, too.
Q. Howie, just from a personnel standpoint on defense, where are you as far as how far from being able to field the kind of defense you guys want to field?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: Yeah, I think when I think about the contributions I can make to help this team, I know that when I'm doing my best and I have my best seasons, this team has a chance to have its best seasons. I hold myself to a very high standard.
I think we have a lot of good young players on this team. I think we have the ability to go out and continue to add to that. I'm very excited about the core that we have on offense going forward, obviously.
In terms of that, our goal every year is to field the best possible team. I go back to last year on the Tuesday after we lost the Super Bowl and Nick walked into my office, and he said, how you doing, and I said to him, I think the thing that I'm most upset about is how many good people we're going to lose on and off the field. So I knew what was coming. I knew the schedule was going to be harder. I knew that it was probably easier to get the offense to a place quicker than it was the defense.
We never want to be just kind of middle of the pack in both.
I feel like a lot of the things that we tried to do last off-season was kind of try to keep our priorities intact about how we like to build the team. We can talk about that and some of the decisions we make.
I accept responsibility for whatever we've got to do to make sure that when the season falls short of not playing this week and beyond, I'm certainly responsible for that, as well.
Q. On the defensive line in particular, what do you attribute that underperformance to, and is there anything about the way the season played out that has changed your roster building philosophy?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: Yeah, I think you don't want -- I feel like we've had a long history of success here building the team a certain way, and I think maybe there's some preconceived notions that we're just at the linebacker position, that we don't care who we play at linebacker. Again, our two Super Bowl teams over the last six years, the linebacker play was good from those guys.
I think if anything, it's my belief in the players that we have, the young players that we have. I have a lot of belief, and I know Coach does, as well, in Nakobe Dean. I believe in the player. I believe in the person.
We lost two linebackers at that spot, two good players from our Super Bowl team, and we had Nakobe waiting in the wings. We drafted him for that role. Obviously it didn't work out perfectly for him this year. That doesn't change the belief we have in the player.
Then we felt like we'd have the ability to get an off-ball linebacker, Will linebacker, who can run and hit, and honestly when you watch the tape, Zach Cunningham had a good year. He really did. He had a mentality that we like for that position.
Of course we'll miss some of the guys that left as free agents, miss some of the guys on and off the field that we had strong relationships with.
Q. What was your involvement in the process that led to Sean Desai's demotion?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: Coach comes to me and kind of tells me what he's thinking, no different than when he decided to give Shane the play calling duty, and he said, this is what I'm going to do. I trust him with the coaching staff; that's his responsibility, just like he trusts me with my front office staff. That's how we're structured here. That's how the relationship works.
I always want to be supportive for him and a resource if he needs me to do something, if he asks me a question, if he asks me an opinion in a situation like this. He had made up his mind, he had made the decision, and I'm going to support him.
Q. If you were to go back, would you replace Sean with Matt again, and what do you learn from replacing a coordinator 13 games into the season?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, obviously I understand that anything that I do, make any decision that I make, if it doesn't work out, you can look at it and second-guess it. We are where we are right now.
At the time I made that decision, like I've told you guys, I made that decision because I thought it was the best decision for the team. Obviously we all fell short at the end, at those last six weeks of the season. All of us did.
I'll say obviously Matt was in a tough situation trying to -- because you can't completely change the defense, so he was trying to make some things happen with, quite frankly, things that weren't his defense.
I know I put Matt in a tough spot, and I know I put Sean in a tough spot, obviously. But at the time that I did that, I did it because I thought it was the best decision for the football team.
There's a lot of decisions I have to make like that, whether I go for it on 4th down in certain situations, what our philosophy is in a four-minute drive at the end of a game, and trust me, every time we do something like that and it doesn't work, I think to myself, what was the best thing, and I can only come back to that answer to you right now, is that -- and forevermore, that at the time when I did it, I did it because I thought it was the best thing for the defense.
Q. Last year you talked about the vision that you had for the defense philosophically. Has that shifted?
NICK SIRIANNI: No, you're always growing as a coach, right, so there's some things that year in, year out, players that you have, different scenarios you go through can lead to where your visions are and your philosophies are. Those things are in constant -- they're evolving at all times.
So are there things that I still believe in even going through a difficult stretch here like we did? Of course. The offense, defense, special teams, how to lead the team, there's a ton of those things.
But I don't think there's any growth unless you look at some things and be critical on yourself and say, okay, well, this was my philosophy here, this was a belief here, and this didn't work out, and sometimes the answer -- you look at those things, and sometimes the answer is no, I still believe in this, and sometimes the answer is, you know what, maybe I need to make an adjustment here with that.
So that's the process of just going through it and trying to get better.
Of course there's things that I'll be adjusting, but there's still things that -- there's probably more -- you don't just take a six-week stretch and say, boom, I'm scratching this entire philosophy. You look at it as a whole. You ask yourself, you drag yourself through the mud of the bad stuff that you've went through, and you say, do I need to make adjustments, and the answer is yes a lot of times, and then the answer is no, this is the way it needs to be, and we've just got to do it better, coach it better, or whatever it is.
Q. The status of the offense, what are the things you're finding yourself open to changing? And you've maintained a lot of the staff to do a lot of the same things, so how has it been looking outside of that, and Howie, with this situation in the offense, what is your confidence that instead (indiscernible) that he can lead that?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: Yeah, I think every conversation that we're having is about how we can move forward together, and I think the important thing for us to look at is before the stretch, which was a difficult stretch, not diminishing the 1-6 stretch at the end, we were 25-5 over the last 31 games. That's four times the amount of games that we played over this stretch. That is hard to do in the National Football League. That is hard to find a head coach in this league who has that record of success.
I think we were 33-11 up until that point with Nick. We've made the playoffs three straight years. Again, not okay finishing 1-6, so I'm not sitting up here saying that. But it is hard to find somebody who can do those sort of things, and I think as we go forward, doing this together in a way that continues to get the best possible people we can on and off the field for me, that's my job, to try to make sure that we have that on the field and my group is as strong as we possibly can get, and I know Nick is committed to that in his group.
Q. When you look at the decision to move on from Brian Johnson, how much of a factor was Jalen -- not necessarily if you consulted him but just as far as making the change and the new offensive coordinator, like how much of a factor is he as far as all that?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, like I said, obviously everything we're doing is trying to get our players to perform better and to continue to grow, so the new coordinator -- if I'm answering your question right here, the new coordinator is obviously going to be heavily involved in not only -- he's bringing in a scheme to be able to run, to be able for us to function in, and that scheme has to be something that our players can function and our quarterback is going to excel at.
I'm looking forward to whoever that is to come in and do those things.
As far as -- and you want there to be comfort with Jalen and whoever is this new coordinator, and so obviously just like I talked to Howie about, just like I talked to Kevin Patullo about it, I'll talk to Jalen about it, as well. You're in constant communication with your players, especially your quarterback, so we'll talk through everything.
I'll keep him aware of things that he needs to be aware of and keep him in the loop of that because he's our guy, and it's really important that those two guys are going to work hand in hand to make sure we're getting back to where we need to be.
Q. Did you have to consult with Jalen about your decision to let Brian go?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, obviously we talk about everything, and we communicate on everything. I won't get into specific discussions on what we talk about, but yeah, we discuss everything.
Q. What was his reaction to Brian getting dismissed?
NICK SIRIANNI: Obviously they have a relationship. You'll have to ask Jalen when you get an opportunity to talk to him. But anytime you have to let people go, we all hurt when we let people go. Every one of us. This is the worst part of the job, having to let people go.
It doesn't just affect the person you let go. It affects the families, and it affects -- there's a friendship there that we have worked together every day for the past three years, and we've spent way more time with each other than we have with our families or our loved ones, and you grow close and you grow close bonds.
I don't even want to get into what every player -- everyone is going to be hurting from this, not just the guy that got let go but the friendships that are -- they're not over, but you're not going to see that person every day like you have in the past.
That's the most difficult part of this business that I feel like if I can explain that on the human side of this thing, that's the most difficult part of this business is saying goodbye to friends, and I can't -- it's the worst part. I really can't explain to you how shitty it feels when you have to do those things, and everybody feels it, coach to coach, player to coach.
Like I said, Brian did so many good things, and like Howie was talking about, the games that we've won, the success that we've had, Brian is a big part of that, and we're all sad for what's went down and what's going on right now.
Q. It's atypical to wait this long to speak. How would you characterize those end-of-season meetings from your perspective, and did you feel like you had to sell your vision or sell yourself in those meetings with Jeffrey?
NICK SIRIANNI: You know, obviously we have those meetings after every year, and we talk about the progression of the team, where we're going, what we did well, things we didn't do well. That was kind of business as usual right there.
It was a little -- obviously at the end of the game on Monday night, you get back late on Tuesday, Howie explained all that, we have player meetings. That takes me about two to three days to get through every player, then you're trying to get through every coach, then you're having the meetings there.
So it's a long process to get to where we are right now to where we're able to answer your questions a little bit more.
I mean, I guess what Howie said what he said why we're meeting right now, but going into the meeting -- say what you asked again.
Q. Did you have to sell yourself or sell your vision?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, again, it was business as usual of how we go about an end-of-year meeting.
Obviously my thought is there -- it was just normal. It wasn't anything different than it's been the last three years.
Now, in my mind, you'd better believe I'm thinking how do I re-prove myself. I was a young coach that Mr. Lurie and Howie and this organization trusted to give the job to. I had to prove myself that this guy can lead the organization like they asked me to, and I had to prove myself from then.
I think you ask me that question, did I have to sell my vision, no, because it was business as usual, but you'd better believe that I'm thinking after that 1-6 finish after starting the way we started and doing the things that we've done in the past that I'm thinking I'm going to prove them right again, and we're going to prove them right. We've got to re-prove ourselves. We've got to go prove it again. That's how I feel right now. That's how I'm attacking this off-season. That's how I'm attacking this upcoming season as we get ready for it. Just hungry to be able to prove myself again to Mr. Lurie and the faith that he's had in me and Howie and the faith he's had in me and the rest of the team and the city.
HOWIE ROSEMAN: Can I just say something because I think it's important. Something you said made me think about this, to think about these exit meetings and what the purpose of them are. The purpose of them is like everything we do; we're trying to accumulate information. For us to make good decisions, we're trying to accumulate decisions. At the end of the day, the decisions are made by us. We understand that everyone has different opinions and perspectives, but we're going to make those decisions.
I say that just in relation to you asked kind of what Jalen -- that's not fair also to Jalen. He's 25 years old. Like Jalen is continuing to grow and get better, and what we see at 25 is going to be different than 26. I'm just using Jalen as an example here.
I think for us it's also important to understand we accept responsibility -- whatever the product is at the end of the day, that's on me, that's on Coach, and we accept that. We don't ask the players to make these decisions. We don't ask the other people who work for us to make these decisions. We try to get information and we try to make the best decisions we possibly can so that the confetti can fall on our head again and we can be world champs again because that's the only agenda.
Q. In terms of Jalen, what needs to be done to get him back to playing like he was in 2022?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, obviously we're all going to have things that we need to work on, and Jalen is no different than any -- we're all going to look at the things from the season and say, we need to work on this or we need to work on that. Without getting into the specifics of that -- you guys are going to ask me what about this, what about that.
The one thing I do know about Jalen is when people or when there are things of his game that he needs to improve, he goes to work and he does -- he busts his ass to do that.
I think you saw such a -- I think there was a lot of questions after that first year about some things about could he be the passer or whatever the questions were, and he came out and put together an MVP type season the following year, and just the way he threw the ball, the way he delivered the ball, accuracy, all those different things. He just continues to grow.
I said it last year a bunch. I don't know if we know what this guy's ceiling is because he's going to work and do everything that he needs to do to get better.
For 11 weeks this year, he was on top of the MVP talk. You guys asked about that, and then he was on top of the MVP talk of where he was through 11 weeks, and we all had a bad stretch through the last portion of it. In fact, there were games, like even though we were in a bad stretch as a team, I thought Jalen was playing really good football.
But I get it; me as the head coach, Jalen as the quarterback, we're going to draw the most scrutiny and the most attention and eyes, and we understand that in the seats that we sit in, but I know that the things that Jalen needs to work on and the things that we'll sit down together and talk about and the things -- no doubt in my mind that he's going to bust his ass to do that because that's who he is. That's who he's been since the day he's got here. That's why he continues to develop in things that people thought was a negative for him in the past that he's made into a strength.
I have no doubt about the person doing that because I've seen him do it. I've seen him do it over and over again, and I look forward to him doing it with this off-season with all the things that we talk about for all of us to improve on.
Q. When you look at what happened this past year, specifically talking about Nick, what gave you the confidence to bring him back for another season to lead this team?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: I've seen it been done. I've had the opportunity to work with him, and I've seen what he has done winning games. Winning games, put us in a position where we're competing for a world championship, putting us in a position where every year we're in the playoff race and given us an opportunity with the team to do that. Those things are hard to find.
I don't know the stat off my head, but I'm sure there's not more than a handful of teams who have made the playoffs the last three years. It takes all of us. We had a tough stretch.
If you go back to when we walked off the field after the Buffalo game and we were 10-1, which I've talked about the time machine, I would take a time machine to do that, that would be a beautiful thing, but we can't. I think there would be a lot different narrative being told, and we can't lose sight of the big picture. We have a lot of good people on this football team. We've got a lot of good players. We've got a lot of good coaches. We've got a lot of good people in this building. I look around this building, I couldn't be more proud of the people. That doesn't mean we can't fight through adversity. That doesn't mean we can't overcome this and take this back to the level and beyond that we were at last year.
It's not going to take a snap of the fingers. We've got to work hard. We've got to do whatever we can to have the right people, bring in the right people to do that, but we have a lot of those pieces in place. This cupboard isn't even close to bare.
Q. There's been talk that Vic Fangio and the Dolphins parted ways and specifically the Eagles will be --
HOWIE ROSEMAN: This is like what happened when you had to do a press conference that one time --
Q. It said specifically he will be the top target; if you can comment on that.
NICK SIRIANNI: We've got a lot of good targets that we're working through, and there are a lot of guys that have done really well in their interview process, and look forward to continuing on that process. We'll see what happens.
Q. As far as the coaches on your staff, have all the evaluations have been completed?
NICK SIRIANNI: We're still working. We're still working. Yeah, and that's what's tough. You're still working, and there's still some guys that are up in the air. I hate this for them, because we are replacing coordinators, and there's guys that are up in the air, and their families are up in the air in the sense of I've got to get a coordinator in before we make a decision on maybe some of the quality controls or some of the position coaches.
I know I believe in the guys upstairs, but also there has to be an ability for some of the coordinators to bring in maybe one or two of their guys or more.
That's still an evaluation process. That's something that might not get sorted out until the coordinator is hired, until that coordinator gets to meet with some of the guys, make sure they can work together. So that's still a process that we're going through.
Q. Over the years you've been pretty consistent with us talking about the offense, whether if Shane is here, it's your offense, calling the plays, Brian, it's your offense. From that change, that evolution, any encouragement come from outside, or is that something just coming from you?
NICK SIRIANNI: Again, I just think that right now we just need to bring some ideas in from the outside. We need to bring a guy in with new ideas that's not part of this family of coaches. I think that's an important thing. Or even if it is from the family of coaches that has been somewhere else -- it could be any of that.
That's important. That's important because that's important that you're making sure you always evolve.
We are blessed with time that college coaches don't have sometimes because they're recruiting, and we're blessed with how much tape we're able to watch, how much tape we're watching on prospects, and we see the other college tape and things like that.
The evolution will not just be of the things that this new coordinator will bring to the table as far as their scheme and things that we may not know a lot about because it is easy to look out and say, ooh, I like to do that, I like to do that, I like to do that, but not know everything there is to know about, and that's why you're bringing in a coordinator to know about those new ideas.
But also we're going to have time over this next six months or five months or whatever it is to also study some ideas ourselves. We'll go to a college, bring somebody in here to make sure we're studying things that we want to learn more about, whether that's something we want to just learn more about, whether that's something we were deficient in last year. Those will be all the different topics of what our professional development is.
Then you also have the things from our offense that we've done well in the past. This will be our offense. This will be the Philadelphia Eagles' offense, not whoever, name the coordinator's offense or my name on it or whoever, Kevin Patullo. This will be our offense.
Really look forward to really evolving the offense and some things that I believe that by the end of the year got stale, and we saw the way how that ended. Statistically we finished positive in a lot of different things, but obviously with the 1-6 finish there were things that got stale.
I really see the beauty of what can happen with bringing in this new coordinator and where our offense can go because of it.
Q. Why did the offense get so stale? Was it because of the quarterback, the play calling --
NICK SIRIANNI: We all have a hand in it. We all have a hand in it, and anything that happens on that field will always start with me. I don't care if that's offense, defense or special teams. I'll be on the front of that, of where the staleness came from.
But we did; there was things that we look at and that we can do better, and whether that's the pass game or whether that's the run game, whether that's the protections, there's parts of that in all areas that we look at and be like, that wore its course.
That doesn't mean that's your entire offense, that's just portions of it, because you're still going to have staples that are staples for you that can be run against any defense at any time at any moment.
That was just some stale moments of all of those phases of the game that I just mentioned.
Q. What perspective do you have now of the roster composition? You made a few references to wanting to keep playing this weekend. How do you think it compares to the teams still playing this weekend?
HOWIE ROSEMAN: Yeah, I think we've always kind of had our own spin on roster building, and I think at the same time I've talked a lot about if you keep following things as opposed to being at the head of the curve, then you're kind of getting the leftovers. You have to be ahead of it.
I think when we've had our best teams, we've been ahead of it.
So we continue to study that and try to figure out ways to do that. We study what's successful, what we think will be successful going forward.
I think in roster building, you're not going to be perfect. You're going to make mistakes. I think that you can look at the four teams playing right now, and I promise you we can go over a couple things they'd like to have back. That's part of it.
The most important thing we've got to have is a vision for how we want it to look. We've got to have a process that we want to have. Sometimes you can have a vision, have a process, and the result is not what you want. So you've got to make sure that you're not overreacting to a result that maybe just kind of was an aberration in the moment, and then you've got to look at maybe is the process right.
I think just like Coach is going through that, I think that's one of the things we're real about around here. How can we get better, what can we do better to improve ourselves. To me, we're at a point here where the only thing that matters is winning. That's the only thing that matters. That's the only thing that matters is for us to put out a product on the field to gives us the best chance to win a championship every year, and I know we can do that because we've done it, and we'll continue to work as hard as we possibly can to continue to grow and learn from any adversity we have and do whatever we can to overcome that.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports