Nick Sirianni: Eagles 'pissed' but 'not hitting panic button' after back-to-back losses
The Eagles’ two-game losing streak has presented the club with a wake-up call.
Philadelphia may have needed it. But head coach Nick Sirianni isn’t going to implement drastic changes just because his team is now facing criticism
Sirianni told reporters on Thursday the Eagles’ two straight blowout losses have forced the team to analyze every aspect of its operation. The main takeaway: They’re not happy with how they’ve performed as of late, and aren’t going to rest until it’s fixed — but they’re also not going to alter their identity.
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“We’ll find every different way we can to improve what we’re doing on offense or defense,” Sirianni said when asked how he weighs his offense’s recent struggles vs. its track record of previous success. “We’re not hitting a panic button as far as we’ve got to do everything different. We didn’t play good and we didn’t coach good the last two weeks. We didn’t play good enough and we didn’t coach good enough the last two weeks to win the games. It wasn’t up to our standard.”
The Eagles’ two defeats weren’t merely losses: They were failures in which the opposition dominated. Philadelphia lost consecutive games by 20-plus points for the first time since 2015, standing as two of the four worst losses in Jalen Hurts‘ tenure as starter. Both came at the hands of Philadelphia’s direct competition in the NFC, too: San Francisco and Dallas.
The Eagles’ biggest issue has been turnovers, with the Eagles owning a -4 turnover margin, and a points differential of just +21, despite having 10 wins to their name. Statistically, something has to give.
“So we’re pissed and we’re looking for ways to fix that,” Sirianni said on Thursday, “and like I said, we have our ideas of what we do, but then sometimes you look at different avenues of whether it’s the criticism from the outside or it’s an analytical thing. … There’s an art to knowing what criticisms you listen to and what ones are jokes for that matter. But that’s our jobs as coaches to go over everything we possibly can do.”
There is good news: Philadelphia is tied for the easiest remaining strength of schedule down the season’s stretch run. There’s no better time than now to get things right, starting on Monday night against a desperate Seahawks team that hasn’t won in a month when a victory would clinch a third-consecutive trip to the postseason..