The Eagles are ‘humble and hungry’ coming out of the bye week. Can it lead to improvement?

When the Eagles returned to the NovaCare Complex on Monday to prepare for their game against the Cleveland Browns, Nick Sirianni took a page out of former Villanova coach Jay Wright’s coaching playbook in his message to the team following their Week 5 bye.

The two-time national championship-winning men’s basketball coach, whom Sirianni consulted in the offseason as he looked to learn from the Eagles’ 2023 collapse, made “humble and hungry” one of his core tenets. Wright’s players wore the mantra on bracelets. He even included it in his Villanova commencement speech in 2022. Sirianni incorporated it in his address to the Eagles, a 2-2 team looking to come to terms with and grow from its shortcomings, following a week of introspection.

“Any self-reflection that you go through, it’s got to start with being humble to say, ‘What are the issues?’ Right?” Sirianni said Wednesday. “For everybody. Being humble of, ‘Hey, these are the issues.’ And then putting thought into how you do different things.

“But I think the whole general thing of how do you get better can start with are you hungry to get better? Does it drive you? Are you obsessed with it? Are you waking up in the middle of the night thinking about how you can get better? How you do things different? Are you at home and your mind’s wandering to figure those things out?”

For the Eagles, there’s plenty to critique from their body of work in a four-game window. The team is tied for the second-worst turnover differential in the league. Jalen Hurts has tossed four interceptions and fumbled five times (three fumbles lost). The offense has yet to score a point in the first quarter, which makes them the only team in the league left to do so.

On the other side of the ball, NFL Next Gen Stats credited the Eagles with 16 missed tackles in their last contest against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which has been a recurring issue throughout the first quarter of the season. The defense is tied for the sixth-highest expected points added per play allowed (+0.06), a statistic that measures expected points added or lost by an opponent after each play.

“There’s definitely nothing to brag about with where we’re at,” said Lane Johnson.

Humility is just another form of accountability to Johnson, the five-time Pro Bowl right tackle who will return to action on Sunday after a one-game hiatus because of a concussion. In his 12 seasons of NFL experience, Johnson has come to learn that the antidote to losing is coming together even closer as a team to work out the kinks instead of isolating, which can be a natural tendency.

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“Let’s pay attention to details, the stuff that’s getting us beat,” Johnson said. “Let’s fix it out in practice first, so we can fix it in the game.”

Hurts took it a step further, “diving into some things” with his coaches over the bye week before attacking the following week of practice, he said. Those conversations included some “great moments” with Sirianni that he opted to keep private.

In the wake of what he called the “most efficient” bye week of his career, Hurts acknowledged that the offense playing clean football in the next 13 games starts with him. Hurts’ total of 11 turnover-worthy plays so far this season, according to Pro Football Focus, accounts for a career-high percentage of his passing attempts (6.7%).

Sirianni noted that some players took time over the break to study the turnovers themselves. While the coach wouldn’t name anybody in that group, Hurts accepted the responsibility he has to take care of the football as the player who touches the ball on every offensive snap. Turning that acknowledgment into a reality comes down to the details.

“From timing to communication, everyone being on the same page on the field in terms of what play is called and how we execute that play,” Hurts said. “Defining it. Alleviating the gray in anything and saying, ‘This is exactly what we’re doing on this.’ With the talent we have, let the talent take over when it’s time to.”

But Hurts hasn’t had all of his talent at his disposal since the season opener against the Green Bay Packers, as A.J. Brown missed the last three games due to a hamstring injury and Johnson and DeVonta Smith were sidelined in Week 4 with concussions. That changes on Sunday, as Brown, Smith, and Johnson have each been removed from the final injury report and are available to play against the Browns.

Even though the Eagles offense put up a season-high 34 points in their lone game at full strength against the Packers, Johnson said that the unit had some of their sloppiest early possessions in recent memory. Their identity remains a work in progress. Without Brown for the last three weeks and Smith in Week 4, the offense has struggled to generate explosive plays. Through Week 5, the offense has posted just 11 receptions of 20 yards or more (fifth fewest in the league).

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Johnson also would like to see the offense increase their tempo to the line of scrimmage, which would allow the group to change the play if needed, control the pace of the drive, and catch defenses off guard. Johnson said the tempo offense typically comes after big plays, which, again, have been lacking.

“It’s been frustrating,” Johnson said. “We haven’t had a game yet where we can say, ‘Yeah, this is what the Eagles offense is supposed to look like.’

“Getting those guys back is huge. Big part of our offense, big part of what we do.”

On the opposite side, conceding chunk gains has been an issue for the defense, particularly as it relates to missed tackles. Sirianni shared a few of the changes introduced to practice this week, which included the incorporation of different tackling drills. But good tackling isn’t just about technique, according to Brandon Graham.

“It’s the attitude, too, that you got to have,” Graham said. “And so if we all collectively getting to the ball, even if somebody missed it, somebody else will be coming in for the second shot. And so we just got to make sure that we’re getting numbers to the ball. I think that’s an easy fix.”

Graham, who is set to play his franchise-high 200th game on Sunday, is the veteran leader among a young defensive front. For some of those players, the 36-year-old defensive end recognized that this could be their first time facing on-field adversity.

He isn’t afraid to pull teammates aside and let them know when he wants to see more from them. But Graham also tries to take the same approach and applaud his teammates when he sees positive developments, all in an effort to be a consistent leader.

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“We all here got the same goal,” Graham said. “We’re all trying to win. But it’s like, at the end of the day, this is what I need from you. Just like you can hold me accountable, too.”

For Johnson, the bye week came at the right time not only for injured players like himself, but also for the rest of the team. The week fell roughly at the halfway point between the players’ July 23 training camp report date and the end of the regular season.

Even if the Eagles are humble enough to recognize their faults after the break, they now must prove that they’re capable of putting those insights into action, starting with their matchup against the Browns.

“We’re accountable at accepting the mistakes that we’ve made,” Johnson said. “We’ve just got to be more accountable in learning from it and growing from it and then fixing the mistakes.

“We have a lot of young players on our team. We have some veterans. I’m one of them. Usually with younger guys, the more football they play, the more experience they get, the better they become. So I firmly believe that’s what’s going to happen with this team”

The Eagles play in Week 6 against the Cleveland Browns. Join Eagles beat reporters Olivia Reiner and EJ Smith as they dissect the hottest storylines surrounding the team on Gameday Central, live from Lincoln Financial Field.