Nick Sirianni: I didn’t have the guys ready to go

The Eagles traveled to Tampa on Sunday hoping to avenge their playoff loss to the Buccaneers last season, but it didn’t take long for them to realize they would be going home as losers again.

Tampa scored touchdowns on its first two possessions, while the Eagles ran six plays without receiving yards in the first quarter. The Bucs would extend their lead to 24-0 before the Eagles took the field, and the final score of 33-16 makes the game seem closer than it ever really felt on the field.

After the game, head coach Nick Sirianni pointed to himself when it came to assigning blame for what went wrong on the field.

“We, of course didn’t start wellwas behind 0:24 at the start. Of course there is no excuse for this. “We didn’t figure it out — we didn’t practice well enough and we didn’t play well enough,” Sirianni said via the team’s website. “I didn’t have the boys ready to go. But our basic requirements were not what we needed. We’ll make sure we work hard on it – the bye week comes at a good time. We need to get our bodies in order and make some fundamental changes. At the start of the game I thought we missed a few tackles – I thought we had a few drops. These will stop drives and those will expand drives – and this is where we need to start with the basics. Then it will be a matter of which positions we assign to the boys. But yeah – we basically didn’t play well enough and we didn’t train well enough when it came to the penalty – everything.”

The Eagles are 2-2 and have hopes of getting players like AJ Brown, DeVonta Smith and Lane Johnson back after the bye, but through the first month there have been few reasons to believe the Eagles are close to catching fire . Sirianni won’t have to fight to take the blame for this, and continued struggles will only increase speculation that someone else will be in charge in Philly before too much time passes.