DeVonta Smith, Darius Slay ruled out for the Eagles’ season finale vs. Giants

Receiver DeVonta Smith will miss his first career NFL game on Sunday when the Eagles head to MetLife Stadium to take on the New York Giants in their season finale.

Smith, 25, was ruled out on Friday after sustaining a mild ankle sprain last week in the fourth quarter of the Eagles’ 35-31 loss to the Arizona Cardinals. On the second-to-last drive of the game, Smith was rolled up on from behind while blocking for running back Kenneth Gainwell on a screen pass on third-and-19, a play that gained four yards and forced the Eagles to settle for a field goal.

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After the game, Smith was spotted outside of the locker room wearing a boot on his right foot and using crutches. In the locker room on Wednesday, Smith was walking around without either apparatus. The third-year wide receiver did not participate in practice all week.

The No. 10 overall pick in the 2021 draft out of Alabama, Smith had previously played in all 50 possible regular-season games in his three-year pro career. In that span, he has 240 receptions for 3,178 yards and 19 touchdowns. Smith has posted back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons alongside fellow receiver A.J. Brown, making them the first Eagles duo to do so in consecutive seasons.

Cornerback Darius Slay is set to miss his fourth straight game after undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery in Week 15. Slay was listed as a limited participant on the injury report on Wednesday and Thursday, but he did not participate in practice on Friday. Running back D’Andre Swift, who popped up on Friday’s injury report with an illness, is questionable to play against the Giants.

Meanwhile, the Eagles are poised to see the return of inside linebacker Zach Cunningham. Cunningham, 29, has been sidelined with a knee injury for the last three weeks, leaving a noticeable hole in the Eagles’ middle-of-the-field defense. He practiced in full capacity for the first time on Thursday and did not have an injury designation on the final report.

Additionally, defensive tackle Jordan Davis (ankle) and slot cornerback Avonte Maddox (elbow) are available to play against the Giants. Both players sustained apparent in-game injuries against the Cardinals, but they returned to practice this week and were removed from the injury report on Friday. Edge rusher Haason Reddick, who was listed on Wednesday’s injury report as a non-participant with an illness, is also good to go for the season finale.

When Brown spoke to the media for the first time in roughly two weeks on Wednesday, he revealed that the game-sealing interception that quarterback Jalen Hurts threw at the end of the Eagles’ 20-17 loss to the Seattle Seahawks in Week 15 came as a result of “improvising.”

Hurts targeted Brown on the first-and-10 play from their own 45-yard line with just 13 seconds remaining in regulation, but safety Julian Love picked off Hurts to effectively end the game. At the time, coach Nick Sirianni covered for his quarterback and his top receiver, claiming that he saw Brown’s one-on-one matchup with cornerback Tre Brown as an opportunity to play for a defensive pass interference call. Brown viewed Sirianni’s willingness to take the blame for the failed play as an example of his loyalty.

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The explanation made little sense at the time and Sirianni received criticism for his proclaimed line of thinking, but he said on Friday that he doesn’t regret lying for the sake of shielding his players.

“I think that’s just what a lot of coaches do, and that’s something I’ve always done and always thought when a coach did that for me was appreciative of it,” Sirianni said. “Also knew that coach was going to correct it after the fact.

“But knowing that when I played, and that was a long time ago, knowing a coach had my back was really important to me. You’re a product of the things you went through. I felt like that would be important to them as well, and then we move on and correct the mistakes we make from that, myself and the players.”

Sirianni explained that Hurts has “total freedom” at the line of scrimmage to improvise and audible to a different play than the one initially called. In some cases, he said, the audible works. For example, in their Week 11 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs, Hurts changed the play with six minutes, 55 seconds remaining in the game and connected with Smith deep for a 41-yard gain.

The receiver got tackled at the one-yard line, setting up a Tush Push touchdown that allowed the Eagles to take the lead and ultimately seal the 21-17 win.

“I think Jalen does a really good job of that,” Sirianni said of Hurts’ audibles. “Has done a lot of good things with that. When it doesn’t go right, like in particular in that game, you have to be able to say, ‘OK, we’ll fix it. This might not have been the time to do it, or this was the right time to do it.’ No one is going to bat a thousand within those decisions. I know this: He’s doing this a lot more and it’s working than it’s not working in that particular case.”

While Sirianni said that he appreciated that Brown came out and took partial responsibility for the interception in the Seahawks game, he said that it was unnecessary for him to go public.

“Nobody really needs to know in those scenarios,” Sirianni said. “All that matters is that we know, and all that matters is that we get better from whatever we did from it. If the play worked, we get better from that. If the play didn’t work, we get better from that.

“This whole team, our third core value is accountability, and that’s a portion of it. So, the portion of accountability I care about is what happens in this building. That was nice of A.J. to say that. He didn’t have to say that.”