Why Sirianni Should Have Played the Odds, Not His Default Setting
EAST RUTHERFORD, NJ – The Philadelphia Eagles lost more than a game Sunday in North Jersey, they lost an air of invincibility during a 20-14 setback to Zach Wilson and the New York Jets.
As late as the two-minute warning, the Eagles looked ready to be the NFL’s only remaining unbeaten team, up 14-12 with many Jets fans contemplating the head start to the impending traffic jam outside of MetLife Stadium.
The critics, meanwhile, were prepared for the weekly style-points argument with Philadelphia, not the more substantive win vs. loss discussion.
The Eagles were facing 3rd-and-9 from their own 46-yard line and the Jets had exhausted all of their timeouts.
The path looked obvious for a CEO head coach who specifically gave up play-calling so he could better manage this type of situation without being bogged down.
Run the football, siphon 45 or so more seconds off the clock, and force the overmatched Wilson to drive into field-goal range with no timeouts against a fierce pass rush.
The goal for what has been the best team in football over the past year-plus is to be situational masters yet Nick Sirianni played his hunch and pressed his default setting of aggressiveness while leaning on the trust he had in quarterback Jalen Hurts.
The only thing that couldn’t happen, happened and Hurts threw into double coverage resulting in an interception by Tony Adams, who returned it to the Philadelphia 8-yard line.
The game was essentially lost in the blink of an eye.
“I think I had an opportunity and I didn’t do my job on the play,” Hurts said. “I don’t think I made the correct read on it. But it happens. It’s an opportunity for us to learn from it and grow.”
One play never loses a football game but one decision might and that’s what happened to the Eagles.
“We thought that if we got the first down there, in that particular case, the game was over,” Sirianni said.
It’s the head coach’s job to mitigate the worst-case scenario whenever possible but the Eagles’ recent success has manifested into hubris.
If Aaron Rodgers were quarterbacking the Jets, by all means, seize the opportunity for the win. With Wilson at the controls, the smart play is to lay up and not go for the green.
The silver lining to this is that it may curtail what has been a cockiness to this team, a belief that the big play is its domain. The signal that this was the time to play it safe should have been highlighted by the three previous turnovers by the Eagles, not the hindsight of a fourth and final one.
“What we thought would be the right play in that particular case,” Sirianni said of the sideline conversation during the two-minute warning between Hurts, himself, and play-caller Brian Johnson. “Listen to what (Hurts) thought, discussing what we thought, discussing what the coverage might be.
“We do a lot of studying of what critical third downs are and critical fourth downs. You go in with a thought, you try to discuss that thought and you just try to come up with the best play you possibly can.”
For whatever reason, that best play didn’t develop on-field with tight end Dallas Goedert bracketed. Hurts could have even eaten the football, taken a sack, and allowed Braden Mann to punt, albeit while surrendering some field position.
What unfurled was an uncharacteristic mental mistake by Hurts, the final piece to a snowball effect that saw the typically reliable DeVonta Smith dropping footballs, the automatic Jake Elliott missing a field goal and D’Andrew Swift and Goedert abandoning ball security for an afternoon in the shadow of New York City.
“[Hurts] had to hold it for a tick longer, I’m going to have to see what happened there,” Sirianni said after the game. “It looked like they played some sort of cover-four on that. … I know Jalen’s going to want that play back, obviously.”
And Sirianni should want his decision back, obviously.
“We want that back,” the coach acknowledged. “If the play doesn’t work, we’re going to look at ourselves as coaches first and say, ‘Was that the right play?’ That’s part of being accountable.
John McMullen:
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