Q. Nick, you've been pretty lucky with weather. On a day like today, do you change anything, emphasize anything differently?
NICK SIRIANNI: No, good work for us to do to get the weather as far as just our handling of the football in practice, which we anticipate in the Northeast we'll have some bad weather games here and there.
It'll be good for us to practice that today. Nothing has changed. I assume if it goes into a lighting we'll I'll have to get off the field, or torrential downpour we might have to change a little bit.
Q. How is Steen?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, working to get back.
Q. When it comes to evaluation of players, how difficult is it to sort of address the preseason games when you're talking about competition level from start of the game to second half?
NICK SIRIANNI: Say that one more time. I'm sorry.
Q. When it comes to evaluation of players, how difficult does it make it for you and the coaches when you have to take in the fact the changing lineups --
NICK SIRIANNI: Got you. You know, again, everything is evaluated from what they do in practice to what they do in the game. Obviously the talent level, everybody is good when you get to this point.
But I hear you. You take everything into account. Obviously we would take that into account as well. We feel like we have so many reps at practice and in the game, the game is just another tool for us to evaluate players. Like I said everything is taken into account.
Q. When you watch the tape, who popped that you might not have appreciated during the game?
NICK SIRIANNI: I thought the guys played hard and physical. Again, like as far as defense goes, we had one missed tackle against Baltimore. I think we had four, two on the same play, against New England, which is still -- you're going to have missed tackles, but thought we tackled well.
I'm saying the missed tackle, but there is also a lot of plays that happen during a game. So, again, we hit our percentage of what we wanted to do. Defense tackled well and pursued to the football well, so I'd say that as a whole, on defense we played with good fundamentals.
On offense some really nice combination blocks that set off some good runs on gap scheme plays. Tyler Steen had in one in particular that he was combo-ing with Dylan that I thought was nice.
Nick had one also I think with Dylan on a similar play that was a really good combination block. I thought we blocked well, caught the ball well. Only had one drop in the game. So we played to our culture as far as detail, as far as our effort and our fundamentals, so I thought that was a positive when you're doing that.
The other thing that you saw, again, you're trying to evaluate -- every time you go out there you're trying to get better at your fundamentals, your detail, your culture, right? The outcome is not always in your control. There are different things that affect kind of that at times.
But I really liked how our guys were connecting on the sideline as far as being there for each other. Someone sent me a clip of AJ, DeVonta, Chauncey, and Jalen Carter going crazy when -- and Parris Campbell when Joe had a really nice catch on the sideline. Really nice play there. You love to see the energy and the guys being there for each other.
So I thought that was really cool. Some of the things as far as our culture goes from the game I thought went really well.
Q. (Regarding Kenny's struggles.)
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, I mean, drives get killed by sacks, right? You know, as far as if you get sacked on second down, now you're in a third and impossible a little bit, right? It's not just the play of the protection, but the next play that could lead to how we play the next play, right? Like we had a second and 22 that we had a good screen pass on.
So it's not just--- again, you're put in different situations as far as what happens after a sack. This is the ultimate team game, so for the quarterback to be successful, the rest of the offensive line, the receivers, the backs, the tight ends, they have to do their job. And vice versa; for the receivers to be successful the quarterback has to.
That's what I'm saying, it's a team game. It's about the team. It's about the team. How everybody plays is dictated by how the other person plays. I would say some of his plays that you would want back happened on a couple of the breakdowns or the play after that.
Q. (Regarding tush push with Jason Kelce out.) Has it changed any? Is it still something you would like to go to?
NICK SIRIANNI: Again, Jason is one piece of that puzzle. Jalen is another huge piece of that puzzle. And then Landon and the guards will be a huge piece of that puzzle. And the offensive line, right?
And so you're just getting reps with guys that haven't got reps of it. So we'll see. We'll see where that is. Obviously not giving any answers until we get out there and play a game.
We haven't been successful with it, right. You're seeing that it is a hard play. Like I'm glad they didn't take it out of the game because it's not just a gimme. It really shows you the talent of the guys that have been out there succeeding at that play for the past two and a half, three years, right?
And so I feel like that should give you an appreciation of how good we've done it in the past. We'll see. We will continue to rep it and walk through it. We'll see if we practice it. That was a discussion this morning if we needed to practice it. We'll go from there.
Q. (Regarding Cooper DeJean's.)
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, we'll see. We'll see where he is as far as -- you don't ever want to overload a guy right at the beginning. Looking forward to watching him practice today and ramping it up a little bit even more today.
And then you got to take each guy as its own case. So you look at the situation that the team has and then you also look at what the guy can do. So time will tell, and look forward to seeing him go out there and roll today.
Q. Are you where you want to be in terms of kick return?
NICK SIRIANNI: Obviously we all have work to continue to do there. You know, I don't think -- we're not where we want to be in anything. We want to continue to grow in everything that we do. Kick return even more so because that's such an unknown.
We gave up a big return, and we need work at it because every time we do it we learn a little bit more about it. Like every time we take a rep our coaches, our players learn a little bit more about it.
We're actually starting a period today. It's not on the script today as far as kick off and kick off return, but today we added a couple things in his practice to emphasize it while pads are on. We will do even more tomorrow to make sure we're ready for it.
To say where we want to be, obviously not, because it's such a new play. But we're going to add some stuff today to practice that you'll see and in the days leading forward to ramp it up even more.
Q. There has been a lot of conversation around the number two quarterback job. What are the different factors things you guys weigh?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, practice every day, walk through every day, classroom every day. Obviously you get -- everyone gets to see, the entire league gets to see the game when it's live and going.
And so there is just so much that goes into it, individual routes versus air, all those things are factored into when you're evaluating, not just a quarterback, but every position.
I'm really pleased with our quarterback room. Jalen has had an unbelievable camp and done an unbelievable job, but I feel like we have two guys -- I love the whole room. Will got in and made some plays.
With Tanner and Kenny, I feel like that we have guys that a lot of teams would like to have and be in this situation where you have two guys that you feel really good about there in case they need to play. Hopefully they never need to play, right? That's the plan.
And Will, like I said, went in for a series and he went down and showed what he could do. So really just excited about the entire room and really pumped that we have that group.
Q. Whenever you historically as a team place a lot of value on the second quarterback. What is the conversation carrying three through the initial 53.
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, the value of a backup quarterback, it's all positions that you need depth at, right? Even more so at that position, because that person touches the ball every time they get the ball or every time there is a play.
We haven't run a lot of Wildcat here in the past, so they touch the ball every single play. So as far as how many you keep, you've seen how many we've kept the last couple years, but every year is a new year, a different year, and see how it goes this year.
Q. What kind of stock do you place in the fact that Jalen hasn't thrown an interception in the practice season?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, what I've seen is like that can go a couple different ways, right? That can go where he's not taking risks, but I don't see it that way. I see him pushing the ball down the field and taking the plays that are there, and when they play he wants is not there, he's checking it down the field. So he's playing really good football.
And so that's a product of him. He's taking what the defense is giving him. That's good quarterback play, right? Good quarterback play, the quarterback play I get so excited about, hey, we have this shot or intermediate chunk on and they didn't give it to you and then we take a check down for ten yards. That's awesome football.
That gets me more excited than sometimes the big wild plays. That's just the development of a quarterback and making plays, and so that's what he's done.
I think he's just had a great camp in that, of taking care the football. We put so much emphasis on winning the turnover battle. I don't know if you guys know, I went over there with the team the other day, but in the past three years, '21, '22, '23, when we won the turnover battle we're 20-1. We were 6-1 in '21; we were 10-0 and '22; and I believe we were 4-0 last year, which that -- ours are even higher than the league average as far as just the turnover battle.
And so we put so much emphasis on that, but you put so much emphasis on that without trying to -- explosive play is important as well. Jalen has just done a really nice job of delivering the football where it needs to go and making great decisions with the football.
Man, I couldn't be more happy with where he is right now, and look forward to him having another good day tomorrow.
Q. Has your definition of an explosive play changed with Kellen Moore?
NICK SIRIANNI: No, uh-uh.
Q. What did you think Nakobe is? Difficult rehab.
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, I think he's had a nice camp. I'm excited about that linebacker group. We got some guys that haven't played at all and some guys that are veterans, and I'm excited about that group.
Bo, you asked me who played well. I thought Nakobe played really well in the game. I thought he played really good game. He was flying around to the ball. He had this play first of all just to talk about our core values he had a detailed play on his tackle where he shot out and made a talk you will on a screen.
That was awesome, right? His fundamentals of tackling. He just got the guy down. Not the prettiest way, just get the guy down. We talk a lot about our fundamentals of tackling. We are going to do a drill out here today to emphasize it again.
He just did an unbelievable job getting the guy down. Then he had a play where he blitzed, had the back on him, and would like to have a better win there on that play, but then the play -- we had a couple missed tackles on the play, and he's four yards in the backfield and retraces and makes a really good tackle. Sometimes what happens on missed tackles is it turns into an explosive. Well, that didn't because of the relentless effort of the Nakobe.
His fundamentals and his tackling and block destruction and then his effort on his plays is really where you're being able to see his talent.
Fastscripts by ASAP Sports...
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports