After dropping a stunner in Week 2, the Philadelphia Eagles find themselves heading into an absolute slobberknocker in Week 3, as they will be traveling down to the “Big Easy” for a certified Louisiana shootout against the most prolific offense in the NFL right now, the New Orleans Saints.
Soon fans will get to see if Nick Sirianni can get his guys back on track if Kellen Moore can dial up the goods, and see how Jalen Hurts matches up with Derek Carr, who is currently having a passing renaissance in Klint Kubiak's offense.
Asked about the challenges of facing the Saints' offense at his Friday press conference, Sirianni used his time to celebrate Carr's developments as a passer, noting he has the Saints offense looking incredibly explosive.
“Yeah, they’ve been explosive. They’ve got good playmakers. [Saints QB] Derek [Carr] is playing really good,” Sirianni told reporters. “Again, a lot of respect for this offense and what they’ve done, you know, these last two weeks. So definitely going to be a challenge.”
While the Saints only rank 11th in total passing yards, much of that has to do with the sheer lopsidedness of their games so far, scoring an insane 91 points versus just 29 by their opponents. If the Eagles are going to secure a win in Week 3, they'll need to get the best out of Vic Fangio's D, as Dennis Allen's offense simply doesn't have many weaknesses on either side of the ball.
Nick Sirianni has the Eagles prepared to play in New Orleans
Discussing the prospects of playing in New Orleans more broadly, as especially now that the Saints are very good, excitement should be at an all-time high, Sirianni noted that the team had made a concerted effort to familiarize themselves with noise, as they believe that being dialed into the expected atmosphere should help with any communication issues it could make.
“Yeah, you just try to simulate as much as you can. Same thing as the cut blocks, you try to simulate it. Tackling, you try to simulate it. So it’ll be loud out there in practice today. It’s been loud. Our ears are ringing from the crowd noise yesterday. Sometimes, you try to even put it up a little bit louder. We have it up as loud as the speakers go, but to make it louder, sometimes you actually use — instead of music, you use the crowd noise. Which can become annoying, but that’s what we’ve done,” Sirianni told reporters.
“So communicating and being on the same page in the noise is one of our keys to win this game. That’s really any time you’re on the road, but especially in New Orleans. That’s just, again, like a rain game, you put water on the ball. You have periods with water on the ball. You do all those different things. It’s the same thing in one of these environments. We’ve let the noise be even louder, like in a game. It kind of goes like this: the noise is loud during the play, and then it comes down a little bit, and then back loud. We try to keep it loud the whole time so they’re constantly having to communicate within that noise.”
Considering how many issues the Eagles had in Week 1 when it came to the simple center-quarterback snap exchange, preparing extensively for that and a similar situation in another loud arena on the road – even if that was technically a home game – has to be paramount to Sirianni's strategy heading into Week 3, as it could really spell the difference between a second straight loss and having a chance to unseat the reigning NFL scoring champs.
