Eagles corner Darius Slay talks surgery, clears the air on his relationship with Matt Patricia

While cornerback Darius Slay isn’t on the practice field, he was back in the locker room on Friday following the arthroscopic knee surgery that he underwent last week.

Slay, 32, explained that he had been dealing with this nagging knee issue for the last four years, since before the Eagles traded for him from the Detroit Lions in 2020. He had been mitigating the symptoms with Advil, but he started to find that painkillers weren’t working. Slay said that he has been playing with a “30% leg” for the last two years.

The veteran cornerback wouldn’t commit to a timeframe for his recovery, but he was optimistic about his early progress so far.

“We’ll see how it could go,” Slay said of a potential return before the end of the regular season. “Like I said, I’m pretty good. I am progressing in the right direction.”

This isn’t the first time that Slay has had arthroscopic knee surgery. In 2013, his rookie season with the Lions, he had the same surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his right knee.

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Meanwhile, shortly after the Eagles announced that Slay was undergoing surgery, coach Nick Sirianni transferred defensive play-calling duties from defensive coordinator Sean Desai to senior defensive assistant Matt Patricia in advance of their game against the Seattle Seahawks. In the first two losses of their current three-game skid, the Eagles defense conceded an average of 37.5 points per game and allowed a total of 850 yards of offense.

“I feel that it’s our fault,” Slay said of Desai’s demotion. “We failed him. That’s the sad part about it, because of the fact that I don’t like seeing a man get demoted because, you know, performance.”

Slay previously worked with Patricia, who was the Lions’ head coach from 2018-20. At the time, Slay and Patricia had a rocky relationship, but in training camp this summer, the cornerback said that they patched things over when the Eagles hired Patricia earlier this year.

On Thursday, Patricia said that he had just given Slay a hug prior to his first press conference with the media, and Slay confirmed that he gets an embrace from Patricia once or twice a week.

“Just be chopping it up,” Slay said. “Sometimes we talk ball, sometimes we talk other stuff. But yeah, man, he’s been a very good, great addition to here, man. He been a great dude. He for sure is a whole different dude than he was in Detroit, I must say.

“Man, I told him, I appreciate him for being a man about the situation and coming in and trying to fix the situation. And so I was like, it’s only right for me as a man as well to give another man a fair shot. And it’s been very, very productive, man.”

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In their latest loss to the Seahawks, the Eagles defense limited their opponent to 20 points. That’s an improvement over their last two games, albeit against a lesser opponent. However, the Seahawks still drove 92 yards on 10 plays on their final drive of the game, culminating in their game-winning touchdown.

Still, Slay could see improvements from the defense in their first game as a whole under Patricia.

“I was telling guys that I can see on film, a lot of guys are playing a lot faster, smarter, and very understanding,” Slay said. “Guys just knowing their role and embracing it.”