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If you ask Nick Sirianni what he’d remember most from the weekend, his Eagles sure gave him a lot of things to choose from. He could take the 41-yard touchdown pass that DeVonta Smith snatched away from Giants safety Julian Love, or the way A.J. Brown beat Giants corner Nick McCloud for a 33-yard touchdown. Or he could go to Miles Sanders’s 40-yard touchdown to seal Philadelphia’s 48–22 victory. Or the three sacks Brandon Graham posted.
But my guess is he might actually pick a moment from before the game.
And that moment took place at the team’s Saturday-night meeting at the hotel. For the second time this year, Sirianni ceded the floor to a player—he’d done so previously with Graham before the Dallas game—by calling Darius Slay up to the front of the room, and Slay didn’t disappoint.
“He was just talking about how much it meant to him that he plays his best game for [former Giants corner] James Bradberry,” Sirianni told me Sunday night after returning to Philly. “He felt like, . And he wanted to go out and do his job to the best of his abilities for James. And he wanted James to play his best, too.”
And that brought Sirianni back to a picture that’s still hanging prominently in the Eagles’ facility today, from the last time they had played the Giants at the Meadowlands—in it, Jalen Hurts has his hands on his knees after throwing an incompletion to end a 13–7 loss, and left tackle Jordan Mailata is standing over the top of him with his hand on his shoulder.
“[Moments like that] happen all the time here,” Sirianni says. “I’m just thinking about what Slay talked about last night, and then also just that picture is a great reminder of what this team is. They’re there for each other. They don’t want to let each other down. And they’re there to pick each other up when times aren’t good.”
Right now, times are very, very good for the 12–1 Eagles. And Sirianni doesn’t think it’s an accident that those other moments flowed into Sunday’s rout of the Giants, which very clearly proved the Eagles are the class of a much-improved NFC East.
Whether or not Mailata picking up Hurts in that moment last year, or Slay wanting to play his best Sunday for Bradberry had anything to do with it, there was very little denying the Eagles’ absolute dominance. It was 21–0 less than a quarter and a half into the game. The Eagles doubled up the Giants (253–123) in rushing yards. They held a 217–93 edge in scrimmage yards in the first half. They were pulling starters with more than five minutes left. They had big plays on offense and defense.
And that they did it coming off a 35–10 beatdown of the Titans—that was the Brown revenge game—giving them consecutive thorough routs of teams with winning records. Those wins go against any notion that the Eagles may lack the ceiling of the 49ers (pre-quarterback injuries, at least), Bills or Chiefs.
“I think it just says that we’re accelerating. We’re getting better as the season goes, which is exactly what you want,” Sirianni says. “There are so many teams that we see so much and in so many years where they start off really hot and then they collapse, or vice versa. And so you want to be just getting better. I think that’s our mindset.”
Which is where, again, he comes back to the relationships he and his staff have built with the players, and the players have built with one another.
To best illustrate that, Sirianni repeatedly raised the word “connect” as the Eagles’ first core value. And that starts with a team that likes being around one another and their work.
“One of the first things we talk about is that it’s gotta be fun when guys come in here,” Sirianni says. “Now, we need to work and we’re going to be very diligent in our work. And it’s going to be very detailed. But when it’s time to have fun, we’re going to have fun. So what does that mean? We have a basketball hoop in the building where they get to shoot with each other in between meetings. We play music when they go into the meetings. The building has pictures of them, the current players, up.
“We have a great game room in our locker room where they get to hang with each other. So they are having fun when they come in there. We try to make practice fun, like in the sense of, . So you’re competing while you’re having fun. Again, we’re playing a game. I'm 41 years old and I’m still on a team. I mean, how awesome is that? It should be fun.”
And for the Eagles, to this point, 2022 certainly has been enjoyable.
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