Eagles news: Sirianni’s playcalling, defensive snaps, Week 3 game ball

The Philadelphia Eagles won a difficult game in a difficult stadium to bring their record to 2-1. There were a lot of great things that happened during the game and when that happens we get a lot of insight the next few days.

Three of the biggest stories that came from that game are about Jalen Carters’ thoughts on how he did, a shift in the snap counts for edge rushers, and incredibly disheartening comments from Nick Sirianni about his impact on the game. 

Eagles news: Jalen Carter was the player of the week, but he wants more

In Week 2, the Eagles defensive line was an insult to the general idea of pass-rushing and they knew it. After practice on Friday, September 20th, Jalen Carter was interviewed at his locker and owned up to it. 

He was asked about how he felt about how he played in the first two weeks and he said, “Me being real to myself? Trash. I feel like I can be way better. I got a lot of stuff that I can work on with hands, and being able to read the formation of the O-Line, read running, passing. Literally everything...”

He was right. From the perspective of being just some idiot watching the game, it certainly looked like he could improve on just about everything because he was continually losing and being taken out of plays.

It turns out that when Jalen Carter says he’s going to do something then he’s going to do it. He bounced back in a major way in Week 3 and turned into the game-wrecker that we’ve seen him be.

When Nick Sirianni spoke to the media on Monday afternoon, he shared that Jalen Carter was the Eagles player of the game. That’s not exactly hard to argue with, because sure, Dallas Goedert and Saquon Barkley did have incredibly clutch plays, but Carter was the one who hit the kill switch on the Saints’ historic start to the season. If you can be a big enough brick wall to stop a speeding train, you deserve a game ball.

Jalen must have been happy with his performance right? Well, after the game, he was once again interviewed at his locker, and he was once again asked how he thought he played: “Trash. I still don’t like how I played but I know that we played good as a team today. That’s one thing, and I’m happy for that…”

Maybe that’s just him buying into the bit or maybe he’s being real. If it is, that’s totally fine because if he can keep doing what he just did, this defense will be a force to be reckoned with. If this isn’t a bit and he wants to take it to a new level… just pray for Baker Mayfield because his life is going to be hell in Week 4.

The defensive snap counts are encouraging

The facts are the facts: Bryce Huff is on a three-year $51,100,000 contract, which is about $17 million per year. Howie made a mistake and it’s something he, the team, and we are going to have to live with.

Some teams and some general managers would be stubborn and say that if a player is getting paid that amount of money then he’s going to play, for better or for worse.  The Eagles aren’t playing that game with Bryce Huff and now that the Week 3 snap counts are out, we can confirm that.

Huff played 18 of the 56 defensive snaps (32 percent). If it seems like you never saw him on the field that’s because you didn’t. Per Next Gen Stats, 13 of those snaps were pass rushes. That’s a good thing because we know that he’s a dud against the run, so Vic Fangio decided to not give him a chance to be exposed.

The unfortunately predictable outcome of those 13 pass rushes was a total of zero tackles, zero sacks, zero pressures, and zero quarterback hurries. That brings his season total to .5 tackles, zero sacks, zero pressures, and zero quarterback hurries through three games. He’s getting paid around $944,000 a week to put up those numbers, so good for him?

Also, unfortunately, this means other players have to take up the workload, and a high workload for starting edge rushers was one of the things that caused the Eagles' downfall in 2023. In that season, Haason Reddick played 862 defensive snaps (74 percent), Josh Sweat played 828 (71 percent), Brandon Graham played 395 (34 percent), and Nolan Smith played 188 (16 percent).

In this game, Brandon Graham played 35 snaps (62 percent), Josh Sweat played 34 (61 percent), and Nolan Smith played 21 (38 percent). So luckily, it seems like Fangio is rotating these guys more than the defensive coordinators did last year.

Nick Sirianni is still calling some plays somehow

So, we know that Sirianni makes makes fourth down decisions, and he does them based on his own analytical charts which are probably drawn in crayon on the back of an Applebee’s placemat. It sucks, but we have to deal with it. 

At the end of his Week 3 post-game press conference, he dropped a bomb on us. Nick said, “...If anyone is wondering about the fourth-and-one call at the end of the half, I called that not Kellen. I called that play at the end of the half. Kellen did not. I called it. It’s what I thought that was what was best for our football team in that particular case. It was my decision. I did it…”

Sure. Whatever man. If you want to make the decision to go for it, fine. There’s a very specific set of circumstances that needed to happen in order for that play to turn into a touchdown, and the probability of those things happening was incredibly low. It was a bad decision, but he’s the head coach, so again, whatever.

But he called the play? It was a fourth-and-one in Week 3, and Nick called a fake Brotherly Shove. Not only is it dumb to bust out a trick play at that moment, but that also means that he specifically chose not to run the play that worked 100% of the time the week prior.

Didn’t we all decide that he shouldn’t call plays back in 2021? He’s been bad at it. He’s bad at it now. He’s going to continue to be bad at it. How on Earth could this possibly still be a thing and who is giving this idea the green light? This was certainly a one-off thing, right?

Well, when he spoke to the media on Monday afternoon he got asked how often he calls plays and why. Nick said, “I don’t say a number, but here and there, that’s gonna happen…” 

Oh dear God, no. “Here and there” is already twice as many plays as he should call. Also, saying “here and there” really really diminishes the gravity of calling a play on a fourth down when you’re in scoring position.

Nick went on to say a few cases where other coaches have suggested plays, “...Just because I did it in that one doesn't mean there is not a play that Kevin Patullo is saying in the ear of Kellen, ‘Hey, what do you think about this there?’ and Kellen going, ‘Yeah, I like that idea,’ or Jeff Stoutland or Jason Michael on a run play particularly, or T.J. on a run play, ‘Hey, they're doing this in this scenario. What do you think about this?’”

Well, Nick ... You’re Kellen’s boss. If your boss tells you to do something, you do it. If a co-worker tells you to do something you politely smile and say, ‘Yeah, sure dude, I’ll get right on that,” with no intention of actually doing it, because that’s how society works.

The only person he named who should call any type of play is Jeff Stoutland and that’s because he’s literally the run game coordinator.

It’s wildly naive (at best) or downright disingenuous (at worst) to pretend that your influence on in-game decisions and play calling is equal to that of Jason Michael who is the tight ends coach, or T.J. Pagnetti who’s an assistant offensive line coach. 

Can’t we just go back to when he just said weird stuff about flowers during press conferences? Times were simpler back then and everyone spent significantly less money on bulk orders of ibuprofen.