Philadelphia Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni is taking full responsibility for a last-second loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars, a defeat that dropped the Eagles to 3-3 on the season and extended their skid to three straight games.
The Eagles led 17-16 with eight seconds remaining in the game, played in London. Rather than have his kicker drive the ball into the end zone to force a touchback, Philadelphia’s kickoff fell short. Jacksonville returned it 53 yards to the Eagles’ 39-yard line, using up seven of the eight remaining seconds. That left just enough time for Jaguars kicker Cam Little to boot a 57-yard field goal as time expired, sealing the comeback win.
Sirianni did not attempt to shift blame after the game.
“I lost us that game and that’s what I said to our guys,” Sirianni said. “What hurt there is that the guys fought so hard, and I don’t make the decision that I should make at the end of the game and I cost us that game, and I put that fully on me.”
He was direct when pressed on whether other factors contributed to the loss.
“At the end of the day, I didn’t make the right decision, and it cost us the game,” Sirianni said. “You know, and so there’s no other way around it. There’s nothing really else to say about that. It’s just I didn’t do my job good enough in that situation.”
Philadelphia’s kickoff coverage had struggled throughout the game, and kicker Jake Elliott could have independently chosen to kick the ball out of the end zone. But Sirianni placed the decision squarely on himself.
He compared the mistake to a missed clutch shot or a dropped pass, saying it would stay with him.
“It’s just like you would feel if you missed a free throw at the end of the game, or if you had a drop,” Sirianni said. “I’ve been in both of those places. And those ones stick with you, and that will stick with me for a long time. … Yeah, that one will hurt for a long time. I still think about those other things that have, I’ve lost games for us in the past as far as, you know, when I played.”
The loss comes a week after the Eagles let a fourth-quarter lead slip away against the Los Angeles Rams, and follows a similar late-game kickoff decision by Dallas Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer that cost Dallas a game against the Baltimore Ravens weeks earlier. Sirianni said he had reviewed that exact scenario on tape before his own team’s loss.
“I watched a ton of those situations after that Dallas game and, again, just didn’t make the right decision in this particular case,” he said.
