In his first comments as the new head coach of the Eagles, facing a pressing decision at quarterback, Nick Sirianni played it safe and punted.
After Doug Pederson was fired following reports of a fractured with Carson Wentz, his successor was mum on whether Wentz would be his quarterback next season.
“What we need to do is evaluate the entire roster,” Sirianni told reporters Friday at his introductory press conference. “We have two quarterbacks in Carson Wentz and Jalen Hurts that are top-notch quarterbacks. A lot of teams don’t have any. So just really excited to work with both of them.”
Of course, the old football adage says that if you have two quarterbacks, you have none.
Sirianni said he had spoken to both Wentz and Hurts since being hired, but would not get into the specifics of those conversations. When asked if there would be an open competition at quarterback if they both return, Sirianni declined to give a definite answer.
“That’s something that we have to look [at] and evaluate,” the former Colts offensive coordinator said. “I’m not ready to say that either way yet. We’re just evaluating our players, evaluating every position. We don’t know any of these guys really yet from what we’ve seen on tape so far because we haven’t watched any. So every position is going to be evaluated and every position is going to be open, I guess to say. We can’t wait to start watching the tape and seeing what our players can do.”
Wentz, the former No. 2 pick of the Eagles, was replaced by Hurts in a Week 13 game against the Packers last season and then lost his starting job the rest of the way. ESPN later reported that Wentz planned to ask for a trade this offseason because of his damaged relationship with Pederson, but that was before the Eagles fired their Super Bowl-winning coach.
The looming quarterback controversy will be a major decision for Sirianni, who became the latest head coach to go viral for his introductory press conference. It wasn’t quite Lions coach Dan Campbell saying his team would bite kneecaps, but Sirianni had heads spinning as he described how his team would operate.
“The next thing that’s very important to me is that we build a smart football team,” Sirianni said during his opening remarks. “I know we have the people in place to do that. The first part of being smart is knowing what to do. We’re going to have systems in place that are easier to learn. Complicated to the defense or offense or special teams group they’re going against, but easy for us to learn. ‘Cause when we can learn our system and we can get good at our system, then our talent can take over. Less thinking equals talent takeover, but we need to have systems in place and we will have systems in place to do so.”