Nick Sirianni Cleared to Return, Plus 5 Keys to Beating Giants
Nick Sirianni is good to go.
The Eagles head coach was cleared from the NFL’s COVID protocols and will be on the sidelines for Sunday’s game.
Call it a Christmas miracle, if you like, but Sirianni went from looking and sounding sick on Sunday to looking much better on Friday.
On Saturday, he passed all the necessary tests and protocols and will be there to try to help his team win their fifth game in the last six and climb to 8-7, putting them above .500 for the first time since they won in Week 1.
“Whenever they tell me I can,” said Sirianni on Friday when asked if there was a cutoff point between possibly getting cleared to when kickoff arrives at 1 p.m. “You know, I'm ready to go. So, they tell me – if it's a minute before the game I'll be there. If it's two days before the game, I'll be there. When they tell me I can go, I'm ready to go. Preparing the same way obviously as if I was in the building all week. The sooner the better.”
The news wasn’t so good for LB Shaun Bradley, a Pro Bowl special teams alternate, after he was placed on the COVID list. The team elevated safety Jared Mayden from the practice squad for the second time this season.
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Here are five keys to an Eagles victory:
Jalen Hurts. The Eagles QB was an efficient 20 for 26 with 296 yards, two rushing scores, and a passing touchdown in Tuesday night’s win over Washington. Twice this week, he was asked about the Giants, a natural question given his three-interception, 17.5 passer rating against them in the Nov. 28, 13-7 loss to New York.
“I flushed that a long time ago,” he said in the aftermath of the team’s seventh win. “I forgot about it. I get to play them this week.”
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Two days later, he was asked again.
“I got a lot of fire going into this game because it’s the next game, Hurts said. “It’s the next game. Every week something happens good, bad or indifferent and it’s always an opportunity for me to learn from it. I’ll learn from two days ago and we’ll move on forward to Sunday.”
Clearly, Hurts will need to perform better.
Ride the hot hand. That would be Dallas Goedert. The tight end is coming off back-to-back career-high receiving yards, but for some inexplicable reason, was a nonfactor in th4 Eagles’ loss last month to the Giants. He was targeted just three times and had only one catch. The one catch he made on a screen went for zero yards.
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Turnovers. Force them and don’t give up any. The Giants have forced 20 turnovers, which are seven more than the Eagles have and New York got three of them last month in its 13-7 win. Meanwhile, the Eagles will likely face QB Jake Fromm making his first NFL start after being drafted in the fifth round by the Buffalo Bills out of Georgia in 2020. As defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon likes to say, “rush and cover, cover and rush.” Do that and maybe Fromm coughs it up a time or two.
Shut down Saquon Barkley. That is something that hasn’t been a problem for any defenses the Giants have played this year. The Penn State RB has yet to run for more than 65 yards in any game this year. Still, he is more than capable of doing that and the defense has to make sure it doesn’t happen against them.
Keep Evan Engram in check. The Eagles haven’t done a good job covering tight ends all season. Of the 22 touchdown passes they have allowed, 10 have come from tight ends. They are good at turning no-name tight ends into household names. They did a better job last week against Washington’s nondescript duo of Ricky Seals-Jones and Justin Bates, but those two still have five receptions for 58 yards combined. Engram is capable of putting up big numbers, though the Eagles did a decent job holding him to three catches on six targets for 37 yards in their first matchup this month.
Ed Kracz is the publisher of SI.com’s Eagle Maven and co-host of the Eagles Unfiltered Podcast. Check out the latest Eagles news at www.SI.com/NFL/Eagles or www.eaglemaven.com and please follow him on Twitter: @kracze.
