Eagles’ Nick Sirianni stands by his calls at the end of the loss to the Falcons

Two days after the Eagles’ stunning 22-21 loss to the Atlanta Falcons, Nick Sirianni stood by the late-game decisions he made on the team’s second-to-last possession of the night, even though the contest didn’t end in his favor.

With 1 minute, 46 seconds remaining in the game, the Eagles were up by three points and on the Falcons’ 10-yard line. On third-and-3, Saquon Barkley dropped a pass in the flat on a Jalen Hurts bootleg, a play to the outside that Sirianni said he preferred because the Falcons had been “bringing junk inside” on the previous Barkley run that wouldn’t have made it a “real clean look” for the offensive line to block for a run. The incomplete pass stopped the clock for Atlanta, which had no timeouts left.

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After the incompletion, Sirianni decided it would be better to settle for a field goal and go up by six points than to go for it on fourth down and risk being up by only three points if the attempt was unsuccessful. The Falcons got the ball back with roughly a minute and a half left and drove for the winning touchdown.

“I was completely convicted that kicking the field goal there was the right decision based off all my studies,” Sirianni said Wednesday. “Now, I come back and I reevaluate it, right? And I’m even more convicted, to be quite honest with you, because of everything that goes into that.”

His conviction, in the moment and after the fact, is rooted in multiple components. In the moment, Sirianni relies on a confluence of his scenario chart, his experiences, the players at his disposal, and the plays they have for any given situation to make a decision. Sirianni said his chart told him to kick it.

He also expressed that he and offensive coordinator Kellen Moore talk about their third- and fourth-down decision-making and play calls throughout the week of preparation and the game, again implying that he did not make the choice impulsively.

“If Kellen and I are just having that conversation right then, then we’ve done a [bleep] job getting ready all week,” Sirianni said.

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After the game, Sirianni said, he went to the analytics department and requested a list of every fourth-down decision when teams are inside their opponent’s 34-yard line, up one to five points, with less than four minutes remaining in the game.

He said from memory that there was a fourth-and-3 that the Houston Texans went for against the Dallas Cowboys in 2022 and a fourth-and-2 that the New York Jets went for against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which appears to be in reference to their 2021 game. On both occasions, the plays were unsuccessful and the opposing teams scored touchdowns on their ensuing possessions to win.

Leaning on his background as an offensive coach, Sirianni also backed his decision by saying “there’s a stress” in handing the ball to a team being down six points with the object of scoring a touchdown, as opposed to three points.

Still, Kirk Cousins and the Falcons offense went 70 yards on six passing plays for the game-winning Drake London touchdown without any timeouts left. Sirianni was confident in the Eagles’ pass defense throughout the game, but the group fell short in the roughly minute-long drive.

“Where we were getting hurt was in the run game,” Sirianni said. “Not necessarily them dropping back and passing. Obviously, we didn’t do a good enough job on that drive. But to that point, we had only given up 15 points, and we were really salty in the red zone up to that point.”

In general, Sirianni said that he has been “pretty darn aggressive” in the opponent’s territory, asserting that the Eagles have gone for it more in that area than any other team in the NFL. He pointed to a number of situations in which the Eagles went for it, including in their two home wins against the Cowboys in 2022 and 2023 and in the NFC championship game against the San Francisco 49ers in 2022.

The reason for his fourth-down aggressiveness is his players, and he listed each of his offensive starters to prove his point. However, he acknowledged that those scenarios were different from the fourth-and-3 against the Falcons.

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“Those are your reasons why you go for it in those scenarios,” Sirianni said. “Now, again, a four-minute scenario is a different scenario with time, the timeouts, all those different things.

“So those are treated different, ‘cause no decision that a coach makes is made just on a piece of paper that says the chart says to go for it here. It’s not that easy, and it’s not that black and white.”