Eagles’ Nick Sirianni changes weekly walkthrough to full-padded practice in attempt to get team back on track

The Philadelphia Eagles are mired in a two-game losing streak after closing out a stretch of playing five consecutive teams with winning records. Even though the Eagles went 3-2 during that stretch, they lost their last two games by a combined score of 75-32. 

Nick Sirianni had been giving his tired team walkthroughs for the first practice of the week. That changed on Thursday, as the Eagles had a full-padded practice in December instead of a walkthrough. 

Yes, Sirianni is changing things up this week. 

“You can easily change schedules to get what you need,” Sirianni said Thursday. “We’re not locked into any schedule. Everything is fluid in attempts of getting better. I feel like here this is a chance for us to get better in the sense of we need to go out there and work on our fundamentals.

“We’re late in the year. Sometimes late in the year you don’t have this opportunity because you’ve got to balance them being rested, got to balance them playing fresh, while also being ready physically and mentally.”

The Monday night game, a product of the new flex schedule by the NFL, certainly helped. The Eagles were the first team flexed from a Sunday game into the Monday night spot, hence an opportunity for Sirianni to work on things. 

“We have an extra day. We have a little extra time and a little extra rest from the last game. That’s why we’re going out there today and having a practice,” Sirianni said. “Whereas in later parts of December we haven’t typically had that here in my past two years.

“We felt like we wanted to get out there today to work some fundamental things. Does that mean that’s going to happen next week? No. Every week is a little bit different. Every week allows you to do different things. We feel as a football team we needed to do that this week.”

The Eagles have put the pads back on before, pre Sirianni. During the Super Bowl season in 2017, the players asked Doug Pederson to put the pads back on leading up to the playoff opener following two poor games to close the regular season. The Eagles ended up winning Super Bowl LII.

Philadelphia is changing things up to get back on track. The players are endorsing the change.