Eagles Nick Sirianni blamed for devastating 6 pick

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Nick Sirianni fell to the sword on Monday afternoon.

Following his teams 20-10 loss to the Saints on Sunday, the focus was on the biggest mistake that came late in the fourth quarter, when Gardner Minshew threw a 6 pick to Saints DB Marshon Lattimore . This basically ended the game.

Although it was clearly a bad decision by Minshew, Sirianni, in his press conference the next day, was blamed for the blunder.

I will take responsibility for the interception, Sirianni said. We came back to a play we had made earlier in the game, and they recognized it, and they made a play out of it. We gave them a recognizable formation and they made a play out of it. We put them in a difficult situation right there.

I think that’s obviously a major shift in what people think of Gardner’s game. They will put a lot on this game. But I accept responsibility. It’s on me. We put him in a tough spot right there.

On play with just about 5½ minutes remaining in the game, the Eagles were backed but had the ball with a chance to drive the field and either equalize or take a lead.

But Minshew tried to sneak up on AJ Brown as Lattimore watched him with inside leverage and cheated on the course all the way. After the match, Brown explained that he tried to alert Minshew to the cover change, but Minshew never looked at him. Lattimore recognized the formation and shouted the road.

As a result, it was an easy pick-6.

Some have questioned Brown’s effort on the play, but the Pro Bowl catcher on Monday took to Twitter (in a series of now-deleted tweets) to defend himself, saying the road was going dead based on the look presented by the defence. He took offense to those who thought he didn’t care.

The responsibility for this game, again, I will come back to is my own, Sirianni said. We were in formation three by one. We moved the guy to the line of scrimmage, down the right side, putting us in a four-on-one. It is a very recognizable formation. A good corner made a play, with smart safety on the other side, with 32 and 23 there. They recognized him. Dennis Allen is a good coach. He recognized it. They had made an adjustment. They did a play.

I will never question the effort of our guys. AJ gives it up for his teammates all the time, every time. So I’ll never question [effort]. This is not a team where I will ever question our efforts because I know how much these guys support each other and how much they do it because they are proud. Again, coming back to that, it’s my responsibility. That’s why they got the interception.

Even aside from that mistake, it wasn’t a good day for Minshew against the Saints as the Eagles really felt the absence of Jalen Hurts. It’s hard to imagine the Eagles losing that game with Hurts at QB and it’s even harder to imagine he would have thrown that error on the pick-6.

But Minshew’s away attack wasn’t great on Sunday either. Coaching certainly played a part in that.

And there’s one specific lesson the Eagles’ offensive coaching staff, namely Sirianni and offensive coordinator Shane Steichen, will take away from the pick-6.

As Shane and I watched it together this morning, as we watched it as a team, we kind of thought, Hey, this is too recognizable a lineup to go back to, Sirianni explained. If we go back to that recognizable formation like that, we have to do something else potentially from there. That’s what we said.

We said, Hey, it’s on us. Just like what I told you, this is where the responsibility begins. The responsibility does not start with us as coaches telling the players, this is what you need to do better. That’s part of it, but the responsibility is that everyone looks in the mirror and says, I screwed that up or I screwed that up. That’s what’s an important part of the process, that is, that’s what I messed up, and that’s what I’m going to do to fix it with that kind of detail, and don’t protect nothing, just leave everything there.

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