Once again, the Eagles defense seemingly played soft coverage and was carved up by a top tier NFL quarterback on Sunday in a 27-24 loss to the Chargers.
"We did some different things," Nick Sirianni told Angelo Cataldi and the 94WIP Morning Show on his weekly Monday morning call-in. "As I looked at it, we mixed it up on them. We played middle field open cover 2 one third of the time. We pressured 20 times. We played one high another one third of the time. We did mix it up. Do we need to get closer to the guys? Yes. Do we need to create some turnovers? Yes. Because we always think about, in this game, if you're protecting the ball and taking the ball away that's a pretty good formula that leads to some wins. The offense is doing a good job to protect it, we just need to get the defense to take the ball away."
Related
Justin Herbert was 32-38 for 356 yards, 2 touchdowns, and no interceptions in the Chargers' win at the Linc. Philadelphia's defense, under new coordinator Jonathan Gannon, is currently on pace to allow the highest completion percentage in NFL History at 75.5%.
Cataldi let Sirianni know that was the fifth time an opposing QB has passed for a completion percentage of 80-percent or more against the Eagles this season. In the previous seven years, it only happened six times total.
"Any time you lose a game, any time you lose a historic pace—which we were. At the beginning of the year we were at a historic pace for what, penalties? Is that what it was?" Sirianni said when asked about the historic completion percentages allowed.
"Did this game look like the Las Vegas game? In a sense, it did, in a sense that a guy had a high completion rate. Did we do the exact same thing? No we didn't, as far as defense. It didn't work. And so we have to go back and try something else, because there is no excuse for that. There is no excuse for all of those guys being 80-percent."
While the offense, Sirianni's specialty, has progressed, the defense has not. However, the head coach says he refuses to point fingers.
"First of all, I'm the head coach of this team," Sirianni said. "Why I say that is, it's my offense, it's my defense, and it's my Special Teams. And so, I'm never going to blame, point a finger at anybody. Do we have to get better on all sides of the ball? Yeah, we have to continue to get better. The defense has to get better, the offense has—we all have to get better. I'm not here to point fingers, I'm here to find solutions. We have to continue to evolve on defense and find out what works for us."
The Eagles are now 3-6, miraculously tied with the Giants for second place in the NFC East behind the 6-2 Cowboys. The Eagles now enter the easiest part of their schedule, as their next seven games come against the Broncos, Saints, Jets, Giants twice, and WFT twice.