GLENDALE, Ariz. -- Here’s what Eagles coach Nick Sirianni had to say after the 38-35 loss to the Chiefs in Super Bowl LVII on Sunday:
On message to the team in the locker room post game: “Going into the San Francisco game, we talked a lot about that we knew that we were physically tough and just wanted to remind them how mentally tough they were. So going into that game, we talked about some failures that we had in our lives that we overcome to get into the position that we were in last weekend, and obviously this position that we are in this week. So I just reminded them of that, you know all of the things we went through in our lives that was something that was adversity that we’ll overcome this too because of the type of guys we have in there. We will use this to motivate us. We will use this pain. We will use this failure to motivate us so that we can make it a strength.”
On quarterback Jalen Hurts’ performance: “To me, Jalen played the best game I’ve seen him play in the two years that we’ve been together. He was outstanding. I really thought he was in complete control. He did things with his legs in the run game. He did things with his arm in the pass game, made some unbelievable throws, unbelievable reads. I thought he played outstanding. And you know you really look at the game and that was good for the NFL in the sense that the two best quarterbacks in the NFL played against each other on the biggest stage in the biggest lights. And Jalen played great.”
On the journey of the season and coming so close in this last game: “It always hurts, right? Any time you don’t come out on top regardless of what you are competing at, it burns you and it gets at you. A lot of credit to them. All the credit to them. They played a great game. It’s a really good football team, a well-coached football team. But it hurts. Like I said, we’ll use this pain, we’ll use this failure for motivation for us moving forward.”
On pregame emotions: “I’ve dreamed about this since I’ve been two years old. I said to our guys, ‘some of you guys have been dreaming about this since you’ve been two, some of you since you’ve been in peewee football, some of you since high school, college or even when you got to the pros. But we’ve all been dreaming of it.’ You know, growing up in a family with a dad that’s a football coach, older brothers that play football, this is what you dream of being in this moment. It’s just emotional because there’s a lot of work, not just by myself, but a lot of people. Starting with my wife and my kids, my brothers, my dad and just so many people – coaches that I’ve had, teammates that I’ve had that helped me get to this moment. So it’s just emotional in that moment knowing where we were at that moment.”
On the defense performance tonight: “We’ll have to look at the tape and see all the things that went wrong. You can’t give a team like that a short field or seven points off of a turnover. So they have the seven points of that, they had the ball on the four-yard-line off of a punt return. We’ll look at it. I can’t exactly tell you this or that, but I thought we were playing a really good offense. We gave up 24 points at the end of the day. It’s tough to give them a short field. That’s why this is the ultimate team game. We’re all in this together – offense, defense, special teams. I just felt like a couple times we put the defense in a tough spot in the defensive area.”
On the call on cornerback James Bradbury at the end of the fourth quarter: “It’s not my job to – you’ll see me on the sidelines. I’m going to argue with different things of calls here and there, but it’s not my job to make the call. Those guys got to do that in split-second scenarios. That’s what he saw, and he called it. I know it always appears to be that it’s one call that makes that game. That’s not what it is. There are so many plays that contribute to the ending result of the game and today, they were better than we were.”
On what he said to quarterback Jalen Hurts after the game: “I know he’s hurt and he’s hurting. I just said, ‘We’ll work our butts off every day.’ I know he’s going to get better from this, and he played really good. That’s why I keep saying I don’t think we know what Jalen’s ceiling is because he is just going to continue to get better. But I said I was happy for him that he played his butt off. He left it all out there, played good in the run game, played good in the pass game, was in complete control of our offense. He led us to 35 points. I just told him I was happy for him. It just wasn’t this year. I told him I thought it was his best game that he’s played. It wasn’t just this game. It was this entire season that he’s shown to be a special leader, a special player. I’m sure glad he’s our quarterback.”
On the Chiefs pass rush: “They did a good job of getting the ball out quick. They did good in the run game. I think you guys can tell me, I think they’re over 150 yards in the run game. You’re playing the run a little bit. They’re some things that we had the pass game on, we had some rushes on that they ended up running the ball well out of. I just thought they did a great job of getting the ball out quick. I thought they did a good job of running the football. And they got one of the best in the planet on their football team, so he’s going to make some plays and (tight end) Travis Kelce, (wide receiver Juju) Smith-Schuster – all their guys made a lot of great plays as well.”
On if he discussed blitzing more to apply pressure to Kansas City: “Those guys are thinking through everything and talking through everything. Sure, we talk about everything on the sideline there, and I got a ton of trust in our defensive staff. Give the Chiefs credit. They had some completions that they get the ball out quick to mitigate our pass rush. They were chipping. They were thumping on the edge on our pass rushers helping the guys out. They did a good job of knowing what our strength was and doing their best to mitigate it.”
On the field conditions and reports they were changing their cleats: “No. When you say something like that, we both had to play on that turf. It’s not like we were playing on ice, and they were playing on grass. We all had to play on it. We all had to figure out our shoes. Sometimes, you do your best to figure out this playing surface as soon as you possibly can. Sometimes you have to change cleats in the middle of the game just because of what’s working for you. Same way as if you had to change a game plan or change of play, so it was just adjusting to a little bit of slippage that was going on in the field. That had nothing to do with anything, we just had to get used to it.”
On how proud he is of the team: “That means a lot. There’s a lot of people that contribute to not just my journey but everyone’s journey in that locker room. We all have people. We all have families. We all have teammates, coaches that have contributed to helping us get here. We wanted to finish the job for them, but it just wasn’t in God’s will today. And again, congrats to the Chiefs.”
On what was discussed during halftime: “After halftime they went right down and scored to cut it to three. We talked about what was working for us and what we wanted to continue to do, what we can anticipate them potentially doing. They did a good job of adjusting. And apparently, with them beating us in the second half, we didn’t do as good of a job as they did adjusting. We’ll all look ourselves in the mirror and drag ourselves through the mud in attempts to get better. We just got to do a better job of coaching in the second half, but credit to them.”
On continuing to run the ball after fumbling: “I was just trying to run our best plays available to us that we felt like were going to work. A guy drops a pass, you don’t stop throwing to him. A guy fumbles a football, you don’t stop running him. A guy throws an interception, you don’t stop throwing it. That’s been our thought process all year. When we say dog mentality, that’s what we mean. We mean that we have to be I the moment. There’s going to be ups and downs in the game, but make sure that we’re in the moment of the next play, having the right mindset to go out and accomplish the next play. We know our guys have that mindset and are able to do that. It was just more of this is what we believe was going to work in that drive and that’s why we used it.”
On the strengths the team can lean on in this offseason: “We have a lot of good people in this organization, starting with all the players that we have. I know we have some free agents. There will be time to discuss that. There will be time to talk through all of that, but I know we’ve got a good nucleus of guys back to continue to build on. There was a lot of good football this year. We did a lot of good things. As a team, this one stings. This one hurts. We will no doubt get better from it. We’ve got a good young quarterback that’s played a phenomenal year, a good offensive line, good defense. Just all accounts. We know we have the right people in place. This organization is a special organization. There’s a lot of special people in this organization led by Mr. Lurie.”
On the review of the defensive holding call at the end of the game: “There’s going to be calls that are going to get questioned, not only by the referees, but there’s going to be questionable things that I do or (defensive coordinator Jonathan) Gannon does or (offensive coordinator) Steichen does or (quarterback) Jalen (Hurts) does. We understand that, but it’s never about one play. They’ve got to make that call in a split decision. I’m not here to debate whether it’s the right call or the wrong call of course. Sometimes it went against us. Of course I don’t like it, but they’ve got to do a hard job in split second decisions, but it never comes down to one play even though as times it perceives to. That’s the parity of this league. That you can always think, ‘Well just this play.’ And that’s just not the case. There are however many plays that we had on offense. There’s however many plays that the Chiefs had on offense and then there’s all those special teams plays too. Again, like I said, they’ve got a hard job to do in a split second, and I haven’t seen all the clips, but hey, that’s not what wins or loses you a game.”
The Bow Tie Chronicles
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