Nick Sirianni refuses to say the truth after costly loss to Cardinals
The Philadelphia Eagles looked like a good football team in the first half of Sunday's loss to the Arizona Cardinals. They were up 21-6 at the half. And then things went sideways. The Eagles' defense fell apart, giving up 29 points to the Cards and the Eagles' offensive playcalling got way too conservative on their […]
The Philadelphia Eagles looked like a good football team in the first half of Sunday's loss to the Arizona Cardinals.
They were up 21-6 at the half.
And then things went sideways.
The Eagles' defense fell apart, giving up 29 points to the Cards and the Eagles' offensive playcalling got way too conservative on their second-to-last drive.
With 4:13 left on the clock and tied in the fourth quarter while facing a 1st and 20 from Arizona's 30-yard line, the Eagles had Hurts run the ball twice before throwing a short pass to Kenneth Gainwell on 3rd and 19.
Not to mention that on that final screen play, the Eagles used wide receiver DeVonta Smith to block for Gainwell and he ended up leaving the game injured.
After the game, reporters asked head coach Nick Sirianni about his decision to keep things conservative and settle for a field goal kick as opposed to looking for a deep pass to one of his several receiving weapons.
Sirianni was as in denial as it gets.
"I don’t think that’s conservative there if they are blitzing a bunch of gaps there, you’re running a gap scheme that has a chance to hit for big yards that we needed to get back into it," Sirianni said. "We could have thrown it there, too. We chose to go there. Hey, it didn’t hit. But I think that sometimes with the gap scheme stuff that you do, it’s more of, you’ve got to do some different things to cancel out gaps if they are bringing everything out.
"So that’s why we went that way. It didn’t work. The screen, we were third and, what was it? That’s tough, you’re going to have a hard time converting. We’ve got to get ourselves into range. The wind was blowing into our face a little bit on that side earlier in the game, so we needed to get into better range to make sure we took a three-point lead there. And, hey, they went down and scored and we didn’t win the game."
The Eagles hoped their defense, which surrendered a total of 449 yards and 32 first downs in the loss, would be able to magically hold off the Cardinals.
Instead, Kyler Murray led a scoring final drive to put the Cards ahead 35-31 and the game ended with Hurts' Hail Mary attempt getting intercepted.
Eagles’ nightmare comes to life immediately after loss to Cardinals
The worst lost of the season.
