Inside the meeting that helped turn the Eagles season around
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Tim McManus, ESPN Staff Writer
PHILADELPHIA — Eagles coach Nick Sirianni had just retreated to his office on a Monday afternoon in late September following a team meeting when three imposing figures appeared in the doorway.
His team had just fallen to 2-2 thanks to a 33-16 loss to the Bucs in Tampa Bay — the site of their lopsided playoff loss in January that completed a 1-6 collapse, expedited the firing of coordinators Brian Johnson and Sean Desai and brought Sirianni’s standing into question.
Quarterback Jalen Hurts went 18-of-30 for 158 yards with a touchdown in the rematch. He was sacked six times and was charged with a pair of fumbles, losing one of them for his seventh turnover of the season — second most in the league, behind only the Tennessee Titans’ Will Levis. The ground game never got established with Tampa jumping out to a 24-0 lead, yet Saquon Barkley still managed to rack up 84 yards on 10 carries.
It was on that sour note that players were set to dispatch from the NovaCare Complex for their bye week respite. But three of them — offensive linemen Lane Johnson, Jordan Mailata and Landon Dickerson — first had to get something off their chests.
“Hey, can we talk?” one asked as they appeared at Sirianni’s door, per Mailata.
“Yeah, come sit down,” Sirianni replied.
The 6-foot-8, 365-pound Mailata made his way inside — along with the 6-6, 325-pound Johnson and 6-6, 332-pound Dickerson — and situated themselves on a couple of small couches inside Sirianni’s office. They proceeded to make their pitch for why the Eagles should shift toward a more run-oriented, offensive line-dependent attack.
“It was just reminding him, ‘You have weapons in the air, on the ground and you have a hell of an O-line,'” Mailata said. “We wanted to lead with, ‘Hey, before Saquon got here, you had us. Now you have us and Saquon. So use it.'”
