Eagles eye road upset against Falcons
Eagles eye road upset of Falcons in Atlanta to start season
It’s been well documented that 40-yearold Nick Sirianni and the Eagles, who open the season Sunday in Atlanta against the Falcons (1 p.m., Fox, WIP 94.1-FM), have one of the least experienced coaching staffs in the NFL.
Defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon is 38, offensive coordinator Shane Steichen 36, special teams coach Michael Clay 30.
How that youth plays out this season is a major question because the Eagles are among the minority of teams who don’t have an ex-head coach on staff to tell the young guns how he got it done over the years.
When Sirianni needs someone to lean on besides his staff he gets in touch with former boss Frank Reich, the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts. Sirianni isn’t ashamed to admit that Reich is like a big brother. And not just football, but personal stuff.
“I trust the guys, obviously immensely, on the staff that I can bounce ideas off of them as well,” Sirianni said. “We’ve all been around good coaches, too, that we were close with as well. I do have a list of guys that I can call. Yeah, no secret, I was on the phone with Frank (Thursday), I was on the phone with Frank the day before that too on the way home. I might have talked to him a little bit more this week than I talked to my wife. I feel really confident that I can call guys that I trust. You know what, I got a dad who was a coach and I got brothers who are coaches, too. I feel like I got a lot of good people in my corner.”
Sirianni obviously is going to need more than outside advice to open the season with a victory against the Falcons, who also have a new coaching staff but are 3.5-point favorites basically because they have a veteran quarterback in Matt Ryan and the game is at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
The dome will be open for the game and the forecast Sunday is for a high of 87 degrees with humidity in excess of 50 percent. That should be a pretty good test for an Eagles team that rarely practiced more than 90 minutes straight.
Ryan is without Julio Jones, who asked to be traded to the Tennessee Titans, but still has game-breaking receiver Calvin Ridley, talented rookie tight end Kyle Pitts and a decent stable of running backs to move the sticks. Of course, the Falcons didn’t play much defense last season, and it looked like that again during the preseason, although coordinator Dean Pees had his reasons for holding back schemes.
The Eagles have talent, as well, particularly in rookie wide receiver DeVonta Smith, the product of Alabama who helped win a national championship at Mercedes-Benz. Receiver Jalen Reagor, running back Miles Sanders and tight ends Zach Ertz and Dallas Goedert are a pretty reliable group of weapons, as well.
It’s just that unproven quarterback Jalen Hurts and the starters barely played in the preseason. And they weren’t exactly functioning like a well-oiled machine down the homestretch of a 4-11-1 campaign last season.
For whatever reasons, Hurts has shied away from questions in which quarterbacks typically assert themselves. Like questions about expectations.
“We don’t really, I’ve never been one, I think we’re a team that’s not going to worry about external factors as we go through
this journey,” Hurts said. “There’s s going to be highs and lows. We want to go out and play our brand of football. We want to play to the standard that we’ve set for ourselves this year.”
The Eagles, for real, will establish some type of standard Sunday. A victory would be unexpected considering the newness. The expectations aren’t exactly sky-high, either. The Eagles widely have been picked to finish last in the NFC East for the second straight year.
“Half the time those people don’t know what they’re talking about,” Sanders said authoritatively. “We’re just focused on the people that we have in this building. We try to get better every day.”
Win or lose, Sirianni can expect a call from Reich.
“I can’t say enough good things about him,” Sirianni said. “Shoot, I know the city can’t either. You guys won a Super Bowl with him as offensive coordinator. He’s like a big brother to me. Again, it’s just not football things. It’s super helpful to have that. I think you ask anybody in life, to be able to talk through things, problems, good times, bad times, whatever, situations you’re going through, everybody needs somebody like that. I’m just lucky that I have somebody like that in Frank.”
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Offensive tackle Jordan Mailata has signed a fouryear contract extension through 2025, the Eagles announced.
The converted rugby player has a deal worth $64 million, with $40.85 million guaranteed according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter. Though the Eagles typically don’t guarantee contracts for injury, it’s a sizable raise from the $850,00 Mailata is scheduled to earn in base pay this season.
Mailata (6-8, 346) evolved into a starting left tackle after a standout rugby career in Australia.
Eagles offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland worked Mailata out at IMG headquarters in Florida before the 2018 draft. When Stoutland returned he recommended the Eagles draft or sign Mailata, who hadn’t played a down of football and didn’t know how to put a helmet on.
“Jordan’s a freak of nature,” Eagles right tackle Lane Johnson said this past week. “With him, it’s just going to be game reps. The more games he plays the better he’s going to be. He can be as good as he wants to be. There’s nobody in the NFL that’s been that big and that size that can move like that. He’s massive.”