Nick Sirianni On Kevin Patullo: Not Into Blame, Into Solutions

Nick Sirianni on Kevin Patullo: Not into blame, into solutions originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

The Eagles have a lot of talent on offense, but through six games their offense has performed well below average.

So what’s the problem?

That’s the natural question fans are asking themselves after watching the Eagles lose back-to-back games to the Broncos and Giants. And it better be the question the Eagles are asking internally. But it shouldn’t come as a shock that head coach Nick Sirianni was not ready to hold anyone publicly accountable, especially when he was asked about first-year offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo.

“Not in this sport is it ever on one person,” Sirianni said on Monday, “and we’re not in the business of assigning blame. We’re in the business of finding solutions. 

“As we watched the tape today, it was a little on everything and that’s this game of team football. I know that we live in a world that wants to assign blame, point the finger, but that’s not the reality of what good teams do. That’s not reality of this sport, and we’ve got a lot of confidence in Kevin and the offensive staff and love some of the thoughts that we have.”

When asked if the Eagles decided to change play-calling in any way during this mini bye week, Sirianni flatly said, “No.”

The Eagles returned 10 of 11 starters from their Super Bowl roster but the one big change this offseason came when Kellen Moore took the head coaching job in New Orleans and was replaced by Patullo, who was promoted from passing game coordinator.

Not only is Patullo a first-year offensive coordinator but he’s also calling the plays for the Eagles’ offense and sometimes that offense through six games has looked stuck in the mud. That’s troubling based on the talent level of that unit.

While Sirianni didn’t want to get into many specifics of what the Eagles learned during their self-scout process this weekend, he did make it seem like the offensive staff found some answers.

“I think this weekend was good for us to be able to really dive into a lot of those things,” Sirianni said. “Obviously, you don’t have the same amount of time that you have in a bye week, but you treat it as a mini bye week and it’s also important that everyone gets a chance to rest and recover because when you’re on a short week — coaches, players, everybody, you put yourself behind a little bit in all departments.

“So, there was a little bit of rest and relaxation, and then there was a lot of trying to figure things out, and obviously not going to dive too deep into that of what. We have a lot of thoughts, a lot of things that we want to put into action. I know Kevin kind of talked about some of those things with our offense today, but I think when you look at it, just being more efficient on first and second down, because right now, we’re not near our standard on third down. Well, why is that? Well, 3rd-and-7+, 8+, it’s going to be harder to convert than 3-and-shorters.”

The Eagles have brought up their inefficiencies on early downs all season. There have been plenty of times they get behind the sticks and then have to alter their game plan. In terms of EPA/play, the Eagles rank 27th in the NFL on early downs and rank 12th on late downs.

Obviously, running the football has been an issue and that hasn’t helped the Eagles’ success on those early downs. But it’s one thing to figure out an issue and it’s another to actually solve the problem.

We’ll find out soon enough where the Eagles are in the process.