It was a softball query.
Following Thursday’s minicamp apply, Eagles QB Jalen Hurts met with reporters to debate how the low season had gone to this point. It’s been an odd one, to make sure, with a brand new offensive coordinator in Kellen Moore putting in a wholly new offense below the watchful eye of the incumbent head coach, Nick Sirianni.
Ever since proprietor Jeffrey Lurie and normal supervisor Howie Roseman determined to retain Sirianni as head coach and usher in Moore to run the offense, Birds watchers have puzzled how Sirianni would take to the change. In spite of everything, there may be the sense that, ought to the offense achieve 2024, Moore will possible get a lot of the credit score, whereas if it struggles, Sirianni will possible be the one to lose his job over it.
It’s a troublesome place to place any head coach in, and there may be not a small quantity of curiosity as to how that is all going to go and the way Sirianni is reacting to it. So it made sense for a reporter to ask Hurts a quite simple query concerning the uncommon teaching dynamic he finds himself in the midst of.
Q: “What have you ever seen about Nick being open-minded to alter up the offense like he has? What does that say about him?”
Simple. A layup. There are 1,000,000 methods a veteran QB like Hurts may have answered this query with out anybody elevating an eyebrow. Hurts responded as if he was answering in a international language.
HURTS: “Um, I imply, that’s a terrific query. I don’t know that I do know the reply to it.”
You don’t know find out how to reply how your head coach, your boss, the man who has been with you since 2021, is dealing with the brand new offensive ideas and the adjustments to an offense he’s overseen the final three years? You’ll be able to’t say whether or not he’s been delivering a constructive message to the workforce, regardless of these difficult circumstances?
Within the hopes of getting a solution to this seemingly easy query, a follow-up was proffered.
Q: “Effectively, what have you ever seen from him so far as doing that?”
In different phrases, does Sirianni look like he’s on board and supportive of what’s occurring? If he giving the gamers the sense that he’s? In different phrases, is Sirianni seemingly being an excellent man and a gracious coach throughout all this turnover? Given a second probability to pump up his head coach, Hurts responded with this.
HURTS: “Um, I feel he’s been nice within the messages he’s delivering to the workforce. Making an attempt to be very intentional in what he’s saying. Yeah.”
Appears to me Hurts dialed up fairly a little bit of phrase soup to keep away from paying a praise to Sirianni.
To be clear, I don’t know if these two males like one another, I don’t know in the event that they tolerate one another, I don’t know in the event that they hate one another, and I don’t suppose you may solely infer the standing of their relationship from these quotes.
What I can let you know is that there are 1,000,000 different methods to reply this softball query in a method that doesn’t trigger controversy. For instance:
“Nick is an expert and he understands what we’re doing right here. I feel he’s been nice.”
Simple. Easy. No muss, no fuss. Or how about…
“It’s a troublesome place for any coach to be in. As gamers, now we have his again. We all know he’s an excellent coach and he and Kellen are working nice collectively.”
The response doesn’t even need to be true. It simply must be plausible. How about yet another?
“Nick’s all the time performed a terrific job of getting us able to play. He’s performed a terrific job of making an attempt to get us on the identical web page. That’s to not say there haven’t been, and received’t be, challenges. However we’re all on this collectively and he’s ensuring it stays that method.”
These are all responses that would or ought to have been provided as a reflex for a participant with as a lot expertise coping with the media as Hurts if he needed to defend his coach and provides him some cowl. By not providing some type of platitude, he gives the look that he has nothing good to say about Sirianni. It’s onerous to consider Hurts was fully baffled by the soft-tossing reporter, particularly when given a second alternative to reply.
Why he selected to not — as soon as once more — is anyone’s guess.
