NFL head coaches often take responsibility for not helping their team, but usually when they seek the blame for losing, they are often covering for someone else’s mistake. Then we have Philadelphia Eagles coach Nick Sirianni.
He took the blame for the Eagles’ walk-off field goal loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday because, well, it was indeed ultimately on him.
Why?
Because the Eagles blew the game in London by not kicking the ball into the end zone while clinging to a 17-16 lead with only eight seconds to play.
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Down two points, the Jaguars returned the kick that was short of the end zone 53 yards to the Eagles’ 39-yard line. The runback took seven seconds.
And with one second remaining left, Cam Little, who has a kicking leg like a howitzer, connected on a game-winning 57-yard field goal.
That left the Eagles with their third loss of the season.
And Sirianni with mushy peas on his face.
“I lost us that game and that’s what I said to our guys,” Sirianni admitted in his post-game news conference.
“What hurt there is that the guys fought so hard, and I don’t make the decision that I should make at the end of the game and I cost us that game, and I put that fully on me.”
Sirianni was not in the mood to accept other reasons the Eagles lost.
“At the end of the day, I didn’t make the right decision, and it cost us the game,” he said. “You know, and so there’s no other way around it. There’s nothing really else to say about that. It’s just I didn’t do my job good enough in that situation.”
It was obviously not all Sirianni’s fault. The Eagles’ kickoff coverage unit was leaky from the start of the game to the end.
And maybe kicker Jake Elliott should have kicked the ball into the end zone of his own accord. He is a veteran and should understand the situation.
But, people in Philly, raise your hand if you disagree that Sirianni had a brain lock.
Waiting for a hand to rise.
Still waiting.
Nobody.
Sirianni is going to carry this for a while because Eagles fans are not too forgiving. And neither is the Philadelphia media.
“It’s just like you would feel if you missed a free throw at the end of the game, or if you had a drop,” Sirianni said. “I’ve been in both of those places. And those ones stick with you, and that will stick with me for a long time.
“… Yeah, that one will hurt for a long time. I still think about those other things that have, I’ve lost games for us in the past as far as, you know, when I played.”
There are two issues with what Sirianni just said:
First, it is the coach’s job to stop the bleeding. His team already allowed a fourth-quarter loss to the Rams last week to become a two-week disaster and grow into a three-game losing skid overall.
Second, if Sirianni’s message to his team is that this loss will stick with him a long time, that is exactly the wrong message to send.
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What’s up with these NFC East coaches?
A couple of weeks ago, the Dallas Cowboys blew a game against the Baltimore Ravens in the final seconds when coach Brian Schottenheimer didn’t order a kickoff rocketed into the end zone.
The crazy part of this is that Sirianni says he saw that situation on tape.
“I watched a ton of those situations after that Dallas game and, again, just didn’t make the right decision in this particular case,” he said.
