Nick Sirianni Takes Responsibility for Second Jalen Hurts Interception in Jets Loss

We will move on from the Eagles/Jets game forever, but one final story with an interesting quote. Nick Sirianni took responsibility for the second Jalen Hurts interception, which was wrapped into a response about helping Jack Driscoll in the blocking game:

Q. Obviously it’s difficult when you lose a player like T Lane Johnson in-game. Curious why there wasn’t more of a shift away from 11 (personnel). You guys played over 80% 11, and when you lose a player like that, was there any thought of playing more 12 or even 13 to help in the blocking aspect to try to give T/G Jack Driscoll a little bit more help. (John McMullen)

NICK SIRIANNI: Those personnel groupings might not necessarily equal what you’re suggesting. But, as far as more help, again, we’ve got a lot of faith in Jack and the things he can do, and we’ve won a lot of big games there with him playing. Of course, you’re always going to look at it and say, ‘hey, could we have done more here, done more there?’ There are different types of help you can give to an offensive line. Sometimes that help comes with an immediate thump on the side by the tight end or receiver, which we sprinkled some of those in there yesterday. And sometimes the thump or chip help or whatever you want to call it comes from the back. When it’s coming from the back — and some of those were the calls too as the game progressed. Sometimes with the back, you can’t guarantee he’s going to get there because he provides help when he doesn’t have protection responsibilities for himself.

…

I thought the one with the interception, I’ll just say that was 100% on me, the interception where Jack’s guy got free late, No. 11 got free late. I’m taking that one. I’m not going to get too much into the why. The players know why, and we discussed this at length of why I thought it was on myself on that interception where Jalen got hit. I’ll take that one with the way the design of the play was on that one. But otherwise, we were giving him some help here and there. Again, you can’t always 100% guarantee he’s going to get that help.

That second paragraph is the thing to focus on.

Sirianni says he’s not going to “get too much into the why,” but he does talk about the “design of the play” two sentences later, so it would suggest to me that there was something schematic here that Sirianni would like to tweak:

This one kind of flew under the radar a bit, but Nick Sirianni took the blame for Jalen Hurts’ second interception on Sunday:

“I’m taking that one. I’m not going to get too much into the why. The players know why, and we discussed this at length…” pic.twitter.com/9KywoZqVgE

— Kevin Kinkead (@Kevin_Kinkead) October 18, 2023

I see a couple of things here. It’s 11 personnel, their typical setup, with one running back, one tight end, and three receivers on the field. Kenneth Gainwell runs a little flat pattern, so there’s no chip to help Driscoll, who is 1v1 with Jermaine Johnson. Dallas Goedert runs a little five yard joint, A.J. Brown is pulling the second safety down, and they’re trying to get DeVonta Smith on a deep post coming out of the slot:

They had Smitty open on that play. The second safety bit down and there was plenty of room over the top. Driscoll just couldn’t hold the block long enough. Makes me wonder if Sirianni’s blaming himself for not having Gainwell throw a block to help out, and/or maybe the route combinations there make the play too slow to develop. My money is on the former. If Gainwell is running a nothing route there, then let him at least chip before releasing.

Sirianni did give us another clue when he answered a different question later in the same press conference:

Q.What was the evaluation of the offensive play calling after watching the film versus when you were in it?(Jeff McLane)

NICK SIRIANNI: I thought Brian (Johnson) did a nice job. I think when you really look at it, there are some detail things, right? Again, there are always going to be detail things as coaches you want back. Always going to be detail things as players you want back. So, there are some detail things there. When we talk about a design of a play, I’m always going to take the brunt of that, of, hey, this design wasn’t good enough. There definitely were a couple of those that the design, I’m like, I didn’t really like the design of this play right here. To me, when that is the case that’s 100% on me. And then as you look at it, it’s going to be hard to sustain drives, score points, when you turn the ball over. The turnovers, it was all something different, each one of them. It wasn’t all on one guy. Jalen gets three interceptions to his name, but they’re not all on him. In fact, I only saw one of them that was on Jalen that he’ll want back. The other ones were on other things. I’m not going to sit here and say this was on this. One of them was on me. Ya’ll can look to see who you think the other one was on. So I didn’t think — again, there are some designs you want back, but the main issue is — I thought Brian did a fine job, but I thought the main issue is any time you’re minus four in the turnover category it’s going to be tough to win that game and tough to score points, and going to be tough to sustain drives.

People will say that Sirianni is just going to bat for his first-year offensive coordinator, and maybe that’s the case. Only he knows. But he’s been consistent in saying that the schematic and design shortcomings are on him.

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