Philadelphia Eagles

How Eagles coaches began prep for Bucs in Sirianni's house

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The Eagles’ charter from Charlotte arrived in Philly early Sunday evening, and with a game against the Buccaneers looming in just four days, Nick Sirianni didn’t want to wait to start preparing.

So he invited a bunch of his assistants to his home in Moorestown, and just a few hours after the Eagles came back to beat the Panthers 21-18, they all dug in on planning for the Bucs.

“When we landed – my kids were already asleep – I brought some of the coaches over to my house, kind of like in that old high school football thing, like, ‘Hey, come over to my house, let's go and let's start planning a little bit.’ And the coaches that weren't calling the game, they did planning – they did a lot of work beforehand. They had a big chunk of it done beforehand to be able to prep me and show me some things to catch me up. 

“And so it was kind of cool because it reminded me of coaches coming over to my parents' house when I was a kid to game plan on that Saturday after a Friday night win. My brother (Mike) does a little of that, too (at Washington and Jefferson). On Sundays, he'll bring some of the coaches over to his house on to prep. So it was finally my opportunity to do that. And I kind of thought that was cool. We had everything we needed there.”

The Eagles’ video department has Sirianni’s home equipped with all the computer and video equipment needed to break down film, so the group gathered around away from the office and began grinding.

The one thing they didn’t have was pizza.

“I didn't get any pizzas,” Sirianni said. “I think Shane (Steichen) might have had some Cheez-Its that were left over from my son's lunch. But yeah, I mean, after you win, you feel good, you're talking through it. We had the Chiefs-Bills game on in the background at my house. And so, it was lighter but it was just – everything was the same in the sense that it was just going through the process that we normally go through. And it was a couple hours. 

“But you know what? That's a good idea. And I'm going to put that on our schedule to make sure next time we have the pizzas ready, whatever the beverage of choice is for the guys, we have all that ready, as well.”

Sirianni recalled a post-game meeting during his time with the Colts where Frank Reich actually had the coaches begin preparing on a short week in the locker room at Lucas Oil Stadium in downtown Indianapolis.

“We stayed in the locker room and let the traffic go through and we stayed in the locker room for about three hours on that Sunday,” he said. “And Frank did have pizzas. That's where he's better than me on that one, he had pizzas and everything like that. We stayed in the locker room, let the traffic go, and then went. But it was fun, we had a good time with it.”

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