Eagles' Nick Sirianni: 'We Focus On Doing Ordinary Better'

PHILADELPHIA - Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni has been persistent with the idea that you can’t just stand still even if you’re the Super Bowl champions. The minute you even look back in the rearview mirror might be the opportunity for another team to pass you in an ultra-competitive environment.

In the spring, Sirianni told a small group of reporters, including Eagles On SI, that we would see some new tweaks during practice this season, and sure enough, an interesting new drill was unveiled in which a receiver is bracketed by an underneath defender and another over the top as the football is delivered.

So, we asked Sirianni what’s behind the new drill and what it’s designed to do.

A football wonk, Sirianni geeked out a bit speaking about the genesis of the drill and why it was inserted.

“Actually, we were talking about contested catches. DeVonta Smith and I were talking about contested catches, and he brought up a drill that they used to do at Alabama and that was the drill,” the coach explained. “Some of our Alabama guys had some old tape of it. I was able to talk to a couple coaches that had done that. And so, it started as a contested catch drill.”

But the drill ended up being much more than that.

“[It’s also] a good competitive drill to make an open field tackle,” Sirianni added. “Whether it's on the sideline, whether it's an angle tackle out in space, we want to do ordinary better than anybody else because those are the things that end up winning football games.”

It’s the little things that add up for Sirianni, a coach with the highest winning percentage in the free-agency era, who is 4-for-4 in playoff appearances with two NFC Championships and a Lombardi Trophy already on his resume.

“II think a lot of people can get enthralled by, 'Look at this, how this play's drawn up and that play's drawn up,'” said Sirianni. That's very important, but at the end of the day, whether it's my son's football team, it's a high school team, whether it's a college team, winning football happens with teams that tackle better, the teams that take care of the football better, the teams that block better, the teams that take the football way better, the teams that block destruct better.

“We focus on doing the ordinary better.”

Last season the Eagles were very good at all of that and Sirianni understands adjustments are coming for him and his team.

“We also know that when you tackle as good as we did and take away the football as good as we did, that other teams are going to prepare for that,” he said. “So, we better be even better at tackling. We better be even better at taking care of the football. We better be even better at taking the football away.

“So those are the designs of all those different drills that we try to do and try to get better at those things and not say, 'Hey, we were a good tackling team, do everything the same.' No, how do we get better at that? … Your culture starts with your actions.”

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