Dolphins 48, Eagles 10
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, Mike and I talked a bunch this week and I knew they were playing them, yeah.
Q. No consideration to change your mindset on that?
NICK SIRIANNI: No. No. Felt like our guys got two good days of work in while we were here. I thought they were ready for that week and I didn't want to over-push them coming into this game after the amount of work that we did in those two days, so I was comfortable with the starters.
Obviously when you play like that -- but it's not acceptable no matter who is against who, but they did a nice job moving the ball and stopping us, but obviously that's not up to our standard.
Q. Carson Strong didn't play a lot in the fourth quarter. Talk about that decision not to play him.
NICK SIRIANNI: Everybody is in a different situation and different scenarios. We wanted Reid to get some work. We wanted Gardner to get some work. That was a little bit more about that than anything.
We wanted to make sure those two guys got the reps they needed in.
Q. As a coach, obviously things changed this week with the stomach virus for them, how do you use this as an evaluation tool? Does it affect that?
NICK SIRIANNI: No, because, again, the second day -- it was good work against the Dolphins the first day, and then the second day we got our practice like we were back at NovaCare. Just so happened to be here obviously.
So we worked hard there at practice on whatever day that was, Thursday. Again, just disappointed in the execution in the game today. Just didn't think we did a good enough job as coaches or players.
That doesn't diminish the amount of good work we got in for the last month plus in training camp. So that's not a good way to leave a bad taste in our mouth to leave with, but we'll fix it, like we attempt to fix everything, and we'll go back to work, look at ourselves in the mirror first at coaches, and get the corrections made the way we need to.
Q. What about the decisions to have the guys like Nakobe and Jordan leave early and then you had guys maybe who have been on the team before, like Davion playing through to the end?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, some of it came down to the numbers that we had, to be honest with us. Everybody was discussed individually, right, from Slay to Jalen to everybody on the roster. So everyone was discussed.
Some of the twos, we didn't play our ones, we didn't play some of our ones -- pardon me, our twos that were in with the ones during practice. Again, we felt like we got good work with them this week, so there were some twos that didn't play.
And then ever two was discussed whether we were playing them a couple series, two quarters, whether they were low on a position and we were low on position as far as the numbers, and then they had to be ready to go all game.
We didn't let guys that came out of the game this time take their pads off just because of the numbers situation. So it wasn't anything there. Just a numbers thing where Davion was continuing to play.
Q. From your vantage point how did you thing Grant Calcaterra played?
NICK SIRIANNI: No, obviously have to go watch the tape. But, you know, I thought he had a good week of practice this week and good to see him back on the field. And then today I'll have to watch, but he made a nice catch on that shallow and showed some acceleration after that, which was good to see.
How many catches did he have?
Q. Two.
NICK SIRIANNI: Two? So I'm not sure if I remember what the second one was off the top of my head.
So he did a couple good things. I'm going to have to watch the tape. Been looking at a lot of stuff out there, but I've been happy with him in practice.
Q. (No microphone.)
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, I mean, that's something, right, with some of the F tight ends that have been more receiving threats in college, that's an adjustment they have to make.
But they can't be a liability in the run game, right? They have to be able to go in there and execute. Yeah, you limit what you ask them to do and this and that.
But, yeah, that's just something we're going to always be working on to get better with him because he doesn't have a lot of experience with it right now.
Q. Obviously you have to watch the film, but Grant was involved in that pick six. Looked like maybe they weren't on the same page. Maybe Reid thought it was coming out. What did you see?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, I'm not -- I mean, I know what happened and I don't want to put it on somebody. We'll fix that in the film room.
I saw exactly what happened. Yeah, just I'll keep that within in and we'll fix it and get better from it.
Q. If you were to give a self-assessment of yourself from this preseason to the last preseason, how would you grade yourself?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, it's just so much different, right? I have a whole full season of coaching and a playoff game under my belt.
So yeah, feel -- we ask our players to get better every single day. We can't ask them to do that unless we're doing that ourselves.
You know, feel like 365 days I'm a little bit better each day. I don't know if I hit that mark every single time, but we're trying to get better just like we want our players to.
I feel better about myself at this point than I did last year at this time.
Q. So you're a competitor. We all know that. You were a little frustrated coming off the field. What was the messaging to the players?
NICK SIRIANNI: Yeah, that's hard when we got a bunch of competitors in that room, right? So it's hard no matter what. You lose something like that bad, that's tough to stomach.
You come out there -- and hats off to Miami. They did a good job. They're well coached. I got a lot of respect for Coach McDaniel and a lot of respect for Coach Boyer. They're well coached and got good players.
But, yeah, you just want -- you never want to come out there and lay an egg like we did. You know, my message was we got to look at it and we got to all look at ourselves in the mirror and get better from it.
I'll always put it on us as coaches first. We are the ones that prepare them, and then they have to be the ones that go out and play. So we all got to look at ourselves in the mirror and get better, and that's the philosophy win or lose that we have after each and every game that we play here in Philadelphia.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports