The Eagles returned to the practice field at the NovaCare Complex for the 2023 edition of NFL training camp.
A team with Super Bowl aspirations and NFC title hope will return most of the league’s most explosive offense while revamping a talented defense with elite veterans up front and in the secondary.
Before the first practice, GM Howie Roseman and head coach Nick Sirianni addressed the media, answering several intriguing questions.
With Philadelphia participating in a walkthrough on Thursday, here are takeaways from Sirianni’s first press conference of the season.
Eagles will embrace a committee approach
Sirianni has made it clear that all five prominent running backs on the roster will see time with the first team offense.
Everybody has an opportunity to earn roles, and looking forward to watching that position group battle because there’s a lot of good options there. They’ll rotate throughout. You’re going to see [RB] Boston [Scott] in with the ones; you’re going to see [RB] Kenny [Gainwell] with the ones; you’re going to see [RB Rashaad] Penny in with the ones; you’re going to see [RB] D’Andre [Swift] ; you’re going to see [RB] Trey Sermon in with the ones; you’re going to see him in with the twos and you’re going to see him in with the threes.
So, there’s no set with it because of the way — they just all need to get reps, and we don’t care where those are happening. They all need to get reps and they all will get reps with different groups. I wouldn’t look too much into who’s with the ones, who’s with the twos, who’s with the threes, because they’ll all be mixing in to make sure they’re getting the reps.
Sirianni on Cam Jurgens
Sirianni confirmed that Cam Jurgens will get the initial first team reps for the Eagles right guard spot.
We’re going to start with [C/G] Cam [Jurgens] right there, but that’s where we’ll start today and we’ll see how that plays out, and then we’ve got some good options there, as well. Looking forward to see how that battle plays itself out, as well, but Cam [Jurgens] will start out there today.
Sirianni on light workload
For the third straight year, Philadelphia will have one of the lightest workloads in the NFL, and the results have been two straight postseason appearances.
ust a little bit the way — we’re still tweaking some things on that, as well, but that’s a little bit fluid, the schedule. I mean, there could be a time where we add one in there. But it was really the way the preseason games fell at the end of the week is just why they kind of ended up that way.
Sirianni on losing two coordinators
Shane Steichen took the Colts job and Jonathan Gannon landed the Cardinals job, resulting in Brian Johnson getting a promotion and Sean Desai getting hired.
Sirianni addressed the changes to the staff.
We think it’s going really well. Offensively it’s a lot simpler. We’re running the same offense we’ve been running for the last two years. It’s just a different guy that’s calling the plays. When you look at how we game plan and all those different things, the only guy that’s not in that room game planning that was last year is [former Eagles Offensive Coordinator and current Colts Head Coach] Shane [Steichen]. But like I said, when we game plan, first everything has to come through me to game plan, right, first and foremost. Then from there it’s [Passing Game Coordinator/Associate Head Coach] Kevin [Patullo] giving some ideas; it was Shane [Steichen] giving some ideas; it was [Offensive Coordinator] Brian [Johnson] giving some ideas; it was [Quarterbacks Coach] Alex Tanney giving some ideas. So really all that you’ve done is exchange [Senior Offensive Assistant] Marcus Brady and Shane [Steichen], and Marcus [Brady] was really there at the end of the year as it was.
Eagles in great condition
Outside of Devon Allen, Philadelphia had no players land on the PUP list after the entire team blasted through the conditioning test.
Yes, everybody did. Guys came back in phenomenal shape. It was really exciting yesterday through the intermittent rain that was happening, kind of had to adjust our schedules, but that’s what we do. You have to adjust to different things. It was great watching the guys run yesterday and just seeing how much they worked at bringing their bodies back in shape. We’ll do a lot with conditioning here in our camp with different things that we’re doing. We know how important it is that if you’re a 4.6 guy, you’re a 4.6 guy all game. Not just 4.6 guy and then you go to a 4.7 guy and then a 4.8 guy. So, we’re going to work our butts off to make sure that the shape that they came back in only continues to develop, and that’s our job as coaches, strength coaches and as a staff.
Sirianni on the Eagles protecting QB1
Jalen Hurts is one of the richest quarterbacks in NFL and it’ll be on Sirianni to scheme the offense in a way that Hurts can continue to be productive, while staying injury free.
Every time we run him, it’s always about protecting him, and it didn’t matter if he had thrown for zero yards or the amount of yards he had right now. That’s just always been our thought process and our process of how we run the quarterback, how we want him to protect himself. We still talk about it. We talked about it, but it would have been malpractice on my part if I didn’t do that when he was the starter going into the 2021 season. We like to look at our process in everything that we do, not just be reactionary to, well, Jalen is making a lot of money now. Sure, you know that, but we feel like we’ve been doing that the past two years of protecting him and him knowing how to protect himself so he is able to play the majority of the season. But we didn’t go into the ’21 season like ‘Well, if he gets hurt, whatever.’ We had the same conversations we’re having today back then. The process hasn’t changed all that much as far as how we tell Jalen to protect himself and how we call plays to make sure we don’t put him at risk.
Sirianni can't wait for the pads
Philadelphia has a young team and the head coach is looking forward to some training camp thumping.
I think once you start putting the pads on and getting into this portion of it, then that will continue to tell the story. I don’t think we’re there yet to make any statements on as far as those — we love the guys that we drafted because we did a lot of work to get the right type of guys, and we know they’ve got the right stuff inside of them and that they’re working their butts off to get better every day. They’ve assimilated well with the rest of the team, and we’re excited to go out there and continue to get them better and develop them.
