Eagles coach Nick Sirianni took the blame for the failure to put the final kickoff of Sunday’s London game against the Jaguars into the end zone. And, yes, it would have made sense to put the Jaguars on their own 35 with no timeouts and eight seconds to play.
The other part of Sirianni’s admission is that he knew he shouldn’t have trusted his kick-coverage unit to make a tackle. Indeed, the game started with a 90-yard kickoff return for a touchdown by the Jaguars that was nullified by offsetting penalties.
As former Steelers coach (and possibly future NFL coach) Mike Tomlin said during Sunday night’s coverage of Ravens-Falcons, a coach needs to be able to trust the players on the back end of the roster to perform on special teams. Sirianni’s certainty that he should have called for a kickoff into the end zone contains an implicit concession that he shouldn’t have trusted his kick-coverage unit to deliver in that moment.
Which raises a real question about the overall quality of the roster. Do they have enough players who can be relied upon to make a tackle on an important special-teams play? Based on what happened on Sunday, they don’t.
Complicating matters is the fact that they apparently plan to devote one of their 53 roster spots, for the rest of the season, to retired right tackle Lane Johnson as part of a strategy to defer the bulk of his cap charges in 2028. That makes it harder, not easier, to have enough competent players to make the play that wasn’t made on Sunday.
Which brings it all back to the kickoff decision. Sirianni is convinced he made the wrong call. And the outcome proves his point.