PHLY Philadelphia Eagles Podcast - Eagles Finish the year on Hard Knocks

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

NFL regular season wraps up tonight on HBO's Hard Knocks & we react to the Philadelphia Eagles blowing an opportunity at the two seed in the NFC in the finale vs. the Washington Commanders. What inside looks to Nick Sirianni's decision behind the scenes come from the episode? Do Jalen Hurts, A.J. Brown & the rest of the Birds stars agree with the decision? Reaction pod to the finale of the NFL regular season. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Thank you. Hello and happy Tuesday evening to all. Welcome into the P.H.L.Y. Eagles podcast after dark, live from the Xfinity Mobile studios from the Hoffman and Lynch Estates. Hope everybody's having a great Tuesday out there. Thanks for hopping in the channel. Jamie Lynch with you. Rich, we watched episode six of HBO's hard knocks tonight. and we're going to go through some of the live reactions and reliving the glorious week 17 ball drop by the birds and uh week week 18 technically excuse me week 18 week 18 7 their 17th game week 18 it's ridiculous I'm still on a 16 game schedule well the san diego Padres uh or excuse me the san diego chargers still playing san diego in my mind and the huge extras are still in the national league in my mind and the huge extras are still in the national league in my mind. So there's a lot of things you just can't get over in life. But happy, happy Tuesday to everybody.

Thanks for hopping in here. Hit that like and subscribe button. And if you're in here, before we get started, Rich, I do want to let the people know. This is your first time ever checking out, P, HLY. Obviously, like and subscribe to the channel. That's free. But if you want to get a free piece of merch for the playoffs, unlocked writing to all some awesome writers in town, if you want to get the Fran Duffy complete NFL draft guide,

an invite to our Discord and so much more. Right now, we're having a sale for the birds back again in the playoffs, $36 intro offer. It's $44 off. That's $36 for the entire year, plus a free shirt, plus free writing. We're giving the stuff away. So it's a great time to consider joining with us and becoming a die hard at PHLY. All right, Rich. Let's get into tonight's episode. It kicked off. I do have to admit, something. I started episode five. So I watched the first like 15 minutes of last weeks that I missed. And I was like texting somebody like, oh, I think I'm on last week's because I think I've seen this clip online already. So then I had to kind of speed up through. So I accelerated through. I believe the giants at first. Yeah. The giant sections you didn't need. I didn't care. I didn't care at all. So it picked up with the birds with Tanner McKee mania in the locker room. The big Oaf quarterback

had his moment in the HBO Spot Life. He's a little bit of a big Oaf, isn't he? He looks like a super nice guy, but yeah, that hat is awful. Just burn it, dude. Just just burn it. That was not a good hat. And then they showed Nick Siriani

and he, you know, he's giving his weekly speech in the auditorium. And I was always curious how they did this, James. And he basically is like, we have three buckets of players here. Some guys who are ready to play and dressed, but you're not going to play. You're in the middle. Some guys who will play a little bit, but on a pitch count, you know, we're going to get you in and out of there.

And then some guys who were just out. And that's, I don't know, I thought that was interesting. That's, he kind of just told the team, you know, we have three buckets of guys who are, who are resting. And then everybody else is going to play. And that's it. So since Bo Wolf isn't with us tonight to speak for him, which bucket would A.J. Dillon fall in. I didn't even think about that. So, I mean, he, like, the way the game played out, the way that the game played out,

he was in the some guys who will play, but we'll get you out of there pretty quickly. Yeah. But I think actually the way he was prepared to play was, you know, you're just playing. You're in the fourth bucket of guys. You're just playing. But it was only two snaps and they're defensive. You know, them not showing Ty Robinson guest at the end of the. game because A.J. Dillon was on the roster was a big miss by HBO, I got to say.

Yeah. Yeah. So we're talking about the finale. And then it went to Nick Siriani talking about his superstitiousness on the sidelines. And Rich, I was unaware that getting field goal blocks is as simple as just asking your special teams coordinator, Michael Clay, can we get a block here? He seems to be two for two, a perfect record. Jamie, that was fascinating. And then the other thing that I was thinking is, does he ask that every single time to Michael Clay? Like, Clay, can we block this one? What if Michael Clay was like, nah, no, we can't. We just going to make the kick.

Yeah. His batting average is actually sub 100 on asking that question. Hey, you know, the Eagles have done well blocking kicks this year and Jalen Carter. I wish they had Jalen Carter miced up for the fish, you know, that whole. that whole element like we could have gone into joe penunzio and all that stuff but um yeah no no i thought that was funny yeah and then it transitioned into uh jordan davis and a man that certainly deserves some shine this year i thought the jordan davis stuff was really cool uh him telling the story uh about you know going to the same restaurant and a waiter being like oh look at this picture

from 2023 and him being like taking it back at his own appearance and seeing the physical difference and the transformation he's had in two years. I think I even forgot like, wow, how much this guy has come from. You know, like he looks like a different person. He said he's dropping the sweets. He talked about his diet. Clint hurt comes on the screen and talks about all the work he's put in. It was really cool to kind of see Jordan Davis get his glow up there. Jordan Davis, got his, you know, you're right, he got the glow up and he got the promotional video for about four minutes just showing the glow up, but he deserves it. And he's played great all year. This has been his best season. I thought it was really cool to hear Clint Hurt both interact with him

on the practice field, but also just talk, you know, in the auditorium doing doing the one-on-one saying, yeah, I mean, the guy is just completely grown up. The one thing I was thinking about, though, Jamie, is that I always think with football, particularly with linemen, the idea of getting skinny, that's like a tough balance, right? Because Jordan Davis in general is still a massive human being

and you need him to be a massive human being to be the player that the Eagles need. But it's clear that whatever that tough balance is between staying huge and being a monster against the run and getting rid of all of those sweets, he certainly found that balance. And that's been probably one of the coolest,

of stories of this Eagle season so far. Yeah, he said, you know, I want to be sexy too. I want to look good. I want to look sexy and skinny. The other thing we learned about Brandon Davis, he's got some pipes on him, Rich. He can sing. We're going to have to get him on the Christmas album, or has he already?

I think he might have been on the Christmas album. Although I will say, if he was on the Christmas album before, it's like, man, he's not playing that well. Like, you know, does he deserve to be on the Christmas album? them. But he certainly does. Yeah, it's got some great pipes. And also a shout out to Ali Love and the whole Peloton crew for, uh, for getting him over the finish line too. So Ali, Ali, Ali Love was in my top three when I was a Peloton regular. Oh, yeah. Who else? Emma, Emma, Lovewell number one, Alex Tucson second. And then Allie Love's classes just kicked my

ass. She was always third. All right. Well, they kicked Jordan Davis's ass because he got in great shape watching her. So yeah. Yeah. And by the way, cross my mom. mind watching Clint Hurt to Jordan Davis one-on-one in the Novacare center there. Is that the two biggest back-to-back, just men that have ever been interviewed in the history of Hard Knocks? Because those two took up the entire screen. Massive units. Clint Hurt is a unit, as the kids say. I always call him the defensive line coaches, defensive line coach, just because it looks like, honestly, he could just put on the pads and play. but yeah, that is a big boy.

Yeah. And then it went to the defensive line team dinner in my old neighborhood in Queen Village, a place called Alice at 9th and Christian. Rich, have you ever eaten there? I have not, actually. I have not. I've been by there a lot right near the Italian market, though. Good to see that in, you know, it's funny, Jamie.

In Philly, there's a lot of these very nice restaurants that are on the corner that are pretty small and when the whole eagle's defensive line gets in there like they're probably taking up three quarters of the restaurant honestly you know they had this huge table you'd bg sitting there with sweats enjoyed the whole scene i'm sure uh you're about to bring up the the guy who sort of stole the show uh during that scene yeah i think i think the jalen phillips conversation about the jesus versus marvel slash stan lee quote was pretty damn funny uh he thought it was an old Bible quote. It turns out it's a Spider-Man Uncle Ben, Stan Lee, original line. That was a pretty funny scene. Yeah. I didn't know what he meant by Uncle Ben until he said, that comes from

Marvel. That comes from Spider-Man's uncle. He said, I think he said, I told my girl that was from the Bible. Stanley was dropping bombs. So really, really enjoyable stuff from Jalen Phillips. He also, by the way, Jalen Phillips, I enjoyed earlier in the episode. when he and Nick Siriani were talking on the practice field and he was like man this would be great if he said if we get a home playoff game which they already had clinched the home

playoff game part and Nick was like details yeah we've we've had a bunch of those this is probably like our seventh we you know honestly listening to you we probably take it for granted a little bit around here so it's cool to see I like jailed films also and jailed Philips

yeah go ahead you're about that guy cat guy so Julia's producing tonight and Julia is one of the few people who has has dipped their toes in both the cat and the dog ownership yeah I was a previous both guy while living in South Philadelphia we had a cat adopt us at our back door one day I never thought I was going to be a cat guy she got along with our rescue dog Bootsie and I became a both guy so I uh I'd like cats more than I thought I ever would. I'll say that. But I was always a dog guy my whole life. I'm a cat guy. And I think Jalen Phillips, he said it perfectly. It's easy. It doesn't take a lot of work. All you got to do, feed it, change the litter, all that stuff. That's pretty much it. You know, take it for a checkup every once in a while. Very self-sufficient animals, not as much work as having to walk the dog around the block. So for that reason, I agree. Jalen Phillips love to see it. For sure. And then

Rich, we got to see something, and this is why I love Hard Knocks. I don't think I'd ever really heard Jeff Stoutland talk much. I've heard him, I've read his interviews. I've heard a couple snippets here and there, but I've never really heard him or seen any behind the scenes footage of him. And it was very cool to see Jeff Stoutland talking to his offensive line room. And I think he called out Drew Kendall, the rookie. And he was like, Drew, what do I tell you every day?

he's like you've got to be literally delusional you got to prepare as if you're starting the game this weekend this is how guys become great they prepare like they're playing i thought it was a really cool thing to be like you literally have to be delusional to play for me i feel like that's going to be a motivational quote for for a lot of people now i love that you got you got to be actually delusional as as a way to motivate somebody who has no chance of playing but you got to prepare it like you are going to play uh i definitely enjoyed that from from jeff staleland not so stanley not the only one dropping bombs yeah in the episode and then it kind of buzzed through the nfc east and it's funny well not funny but it's crazy to look back in

hindsight being 2020 seeing all three defensive coordinators end up getting fired and it's just like uncle vick left standing at the top of nfc east mountain he destroyed the entire conference yes they're all of those guys are gone cliff kingsbury also gone and Yeah, I mean, just crazy that the Eagles are, yeah, they're the ones left standing. And, you know, it felt like at the beginning of the year, they were going to be the best team. But as we know, in the NFC East, the whole back-to-back thing for them to, to struggle a little bit through the year. And even when they won, it wasn't always the prettiest, but to easily win the NFC East, yeah, life is good for Eagles fans. As Billy Bob Joe says in the chat, Jordan Myelotta, Jeff Stoutland University.

I also got a kick, by the way, real quick, I also got a kick out of Maillada and Cooper DeGine as the scout team guys last week. You know, Cooper DeGine is like a receiver running routes. It looked like Jordan Milata was rushing the passer, which I'm sure he was, you know, preparing the offensive linemen or whatever. I did get a kick out of that. Yeah. Then we got to the game footage. Not a ton to take away from it. My two big takeaways were, man, Devante Smith is so.

smooth. That catch that McKee threw up to him that got on the record, there's very few guys in the NFL that can make that catch to just glide backwards through the hash marks where you, you know, potential contact on a double team is to high point a ball, to land as gracefully as they did. He's just, he's so smooth. That kid is just absolutely going to be one of the all-time great Eagle wide receivers. Already is, but he is just special. I also thought Siriani screaming at him on the first one where, you know, he catches the, the hitch and the, you know, the defensive back is about five yards away from him. And, yeah, like he did what you would normally do in a regular season game, which is kind of run over the guy and try and get as many yards you can. And Nick is screaming on him, get out of bounds, man.

Like, we're just, we're just trying to get you over a thousand yards here. Like, we're trying to do this in the easiest way possible. And you kind of saw it after he did get the 1,000 yards after making that graceful catch. as well. Like Nick has a very good relationship with, I think, both Devante and AJ. And I know AJ kind of gave Nick the side eye in that tunnel video, uh, against the bills a few, a few weeks ago, but it just seems like, you know, they're the guys who dump Gatorade on Nick. I don't know if it's because that, you know, Nick is a, a wide receiver's coach. That's sort of where he came from and maybe he's worked with those guys a lot or they just like him as a dude. It seems like he

connects with those two people. Nice moment between those two guys. Yeah. And, the only other takeaway I had from the game footage was Keely Ringo, tremendous special teams player. But rewatching that play of Josh Johnson's touchdown now several times, woof, that's a tough look. Keeley Ringo, I will say, and he's probably the number one guy, but also Jacorian Bennett as well. They were fortunate that Hard Knocks was sort of buzzing through this week, right?

They weren't really focusing on the games too much. They were just trying to get some quarterback highlights and some other footage from the game. So they didn't really get into the details of how the Eagles lost that game. It was a little more frustrating watching it live than watching it back. You're like, yeah, it's fine. It's a nothing loss. It's all good. And then the only two other notes I had, Rich, were non-Eagle notes.

I didn't even realize it happened in the game that Bobby Wagner got his 2000th tackle in the league. And there's only three people to ever do that. and one of them was his coach London Fletcher. I thought that was a pretty cool moment in the locker room after the game of London being one of the only two men on earth to hand a game ball to now the third man on earth that have over 2,000 tackles in the NFL. That was pretty cool.

London Fletcher was the Washington middle linebacker for forever. And when he was giving that speech, you're right. I didn't know that Bobby Wagner broke that record. But when London Fletcher was giving the speech, and I was like, okay, yeah, they flash his name up. on the screen. I'm thinking, like, London Fletcher probably is one of those other two guys. Like he just played a lot. He had a ton of tackles. And I got to say, that was pretty cool. That's it. Not the best Bobby Wagner thing from the episode. I don't know if you were buzzing

through during this part. So did you see the Bobby Marsh or Bobby Wagner discussion about the Martian? No, I didn't. Okay. So go back after the episode. You'll enjoy it. This is probably the one thing that you missed that that's worth it. He's talking in the linebacker's room and he's talking about how he was on a plane once and he missed the moment when a flight attendant comes by

with all the headphones to watch the in-flight entertainment. And for some reason he was like, I just missed the person. Now, he probably could have flagged down this flight attendant and asked for the headphones. Like they're pretty good with, okay, yeah, here, yeah, take some more.

So he said that the person next to him was watching the movie The Martian. with Matt Damon on the screen. And he said he watched the whole movie just through that person's screen with no subtitles or anything. And he said, it was a good movie. I really enjoyed that experience. And I don't want to watch the movie again because it'll ruin it for me, because I

enjoyed that experience so much. What? It was wild. The other two guys in the linebacker room were like, wait, so you didn't like know what anybody was saying in the movie? so good good bovi wagner episode overall because that was that was out there look as somebody who's on planes and if sometimes if you're on an aisle seat you look over at the person in the aisle seat the row ahead of you see yeah what's that person watching or whatever i might do that for like

two minutes okay the guy man on or nuts or something like that but like i'll put on my own entertainment after that. Yeah, it's crazy. He just, he was so satisfied with watching the Martian, but not understanding anything that was said. Good for Bobby Wagner. And then the last one I just not noted, uh, it sure looked like Jerry Jones's handler as he was getting ushered out of the stadium of another losing season. It looked like his handler was carrying his, his, um, his gold, uh, metal gold in trim's purse. Hmm. I think Jerry Jones is a purse guy. A merce, a man purse.

Not even a satchel, like a beautiful lady's purse. Hey, look, I didn't know Jerry gets down like that, but hey, like, it doesn't surprise me. You know, he's an eccentric man in 2025. No, not at all. Not at all. And hey, look, Jerry's a wealthy guy. So I'm sure, I'm sure if he does want a purse, he's going to make sure it's, it's bling down everything.

It's a nice one. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, that was pretty much it from tonight's episode. Now, Mr. Bowulf does tell me he believes there's going to be another episode where they focus on the Eagles in the playoffs. That is not confirmed. That was just some office gossip today. I don't know if HBO has announced that or not. But I guess that means the cameras are still around. So will you watch an episode if the Eagles lose next Tuesday, no? It's a great point. I'm out. I think the answer is no, because there's nothing worse than an Eagles playoff loss. You just kind of want to log off for a few days. Now, I will say it was much harder 20 years ago at this point, you know, when they're making all of those NFC championship games.

And we hadn't won one yet, Jamie. So it's a little easier now. The pain isn't the same anymore. You got one last year. I'm not like, when I was a kid, some of those earlier losses, like, it's like, I'm not watching Sports Center for three days minimum like I just I got to be off the grid so it's a little bit different this time am I going to watch hard knocks though yeah maybe that's like a summer project for me it's it's a good point but if they win and it's week by week I will absolutely watch that

and the other thing I will say james is that I really enjoyed the end when they were showing the other three teams like in the montage and I was like oh I know what they're doing I know what they're doing they're saying their season is over and you know they're they're football men and their lifers and they'll be back. But the subtext there was they're done. They're done. And then they cut to Philadelphia and say, hey, these guys are still going, the champs, and they end with the shout of the lake. And part of the reason I love Hard Knocks is I just think it's an incredibly produced show.

Rich, I don't know how big of a music guy you are, but kudos to the, uh, the music, uh, technical musical, musical director of Hard Knocks closed it out with a little war on drugs, a Philadelphia band in that montage. So I thought that was a nice little chef kiss there for Philadelphia. To the victor go the spoils. Damn right. All right.

There is a Flyers post game going on on our channel right now. That's it for our reactions to tonight's episode. Hop over and enjoy the Flyers Victory 5-2 over the Anaheim ducks. Charlie and Bill are live now. Don't forget about that

die-hard offer if you're new to P-H-L-Y. We give away a ton of free content. We give away a daily YouTube show. We give away podcast. We give away all sorts of stuff. But we also have a premium membership. You get a free piece of merch. Invite to the Discord. Unlocked full content on our website from some of the best writers in the city. $36 for the year. Just a little over $3 a month. I promise you it's worth it. Great sale going on now to celebrate the birds back in the playoffs. Thank you to Julia for producing behind the scenes. Rich, thanks for taking some time this Tuesday evening to talk a little hard knocks and the birds. Me and you will be back on the bird show this Friday at 2 o'clock.

Anthony Gargano tomorrow at 9, full slate of shows. Make sure you're checking out the channel, liking and subscribing. And thanks everybody for hanging out with us tonight. We will see you soon here on the PHLY Eagles podcast. Thank you.