Nick Sirianni changed the way the Eagles practice with support from team leadership. Now, they’re seeing results.

Toward the end of a victorious postgame speech earlier this season, Nick Sirianni answered a passing question so nonchalantly players weren’t sure whether to believe him.

I’ll see you Monday.

In Sirianni’s locker rooms and others across the NFL, terms like “victory Monday” and “walk-through Wednesday” quickly become phrases understood by all. Wins, especially late in the season, often earn players the next two days off, and padded practices early in the year typically give way to lighter walk-throughs to keep players healthy toward the end of the regular season.

So when Sirianni told the group a couple months ago that there wouldn’t be any more victory Mondays this year, they almost didn’t buy it. It had come out of nowhere for some. Maybe it was a ploy to motivate the group? Maybe they misheard him?

“He kind of sprung it on us,” Eagles linebacker Nakobe Dean said. “He was like, ‘Yeah, and we won’t have any victory Mondays. We’re working on Monday for the rest of the year.’ I think it was Week 7 or Week 8. And we were like, ‘Oh, OK. Maybe he’s just kind of saying it for right now?’ But, no, that’s how it’s been, and we’ve embraced it.”

The change to the start of the week is one of a handful of adjustments Sirianni and his coaching staff have made this year in an effort to better prepare for the season’s final stretch. It’s a stretch the Eagles struggled with last year; they lost six of their final seven regular-season games, which sparked an offseason of conversations about how to address the sharp regression, conversations that included the team’s leadership council more than in past offseasons.

Sirianni’s added emphasis on Mondays was one of the by-products, something he said was reinforced by a request from quarterback Jalen Hurts, among others.

“I was thinking about it. [It was] one of the things I ruminated on over some of the things that happened last year and why I felt like some things happened,” Sirianni told The Inquirer. “Even though we had a big win, we’re going to come in here, and we’re going to get better from this tape. ... And that was from some of the players, too. I talked to Jalen about it. Jalen was like, ‘Hey, we need to put this game — we have to learn from the game.’ I think we all came up with the same theory.”

The approach to practice has changed as well. It was foreshadowed by a training camp that Sirianni warned would be more difficult than summers before and has now materialized into padded practices later into the season with an added emphasis on physicality.

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Eagles left tackle Jordan Mailata said players may have been skeptical at first, but casting away some of the complacency that set in last season has been the result of Sirianni shaking things up.

“We had gotten comfortable,” Mailata said. “We had gotten comfortable off the routine. Nick would always give us the victory Mondays, the walk-through on Wednesdays. But that’s a long time off. That’s three days off. And for guys that don’t play in the game, that’s five days off. That’s a long time.”

Dean added: “The first two years, if you think about it, we were almost [to] walk-through Wednesdays by Week 6 or Week 7. And we were off damn near every Monday that we won. So it’s definitely been different, but it’s been good. It’s worked.”

Nearly every Wednesday since the Eagles’ early-season bye week, safeties coach Joe Kasper stands about a yard in front of a mattress-sized pad, holding a step-over bag and bracing as Eagles defenders take turns running into him in quick succession.

It’s a drill that looks worse than it actually is for the young coach, who generously measures in around 6 feet tall and less than 200 pounds.

If the players do it right, Kasper said, nobody gets hurt.

“I have an idea of how I want to fall,” Kasper told The Inquirer. “I’m anticipating getting hit. I know how I want to fall; I know how to land on the pad so that I don’t get dinged. And, honestly, one of the best parts about it, if it’s not a proper tackle, I can feel like kind of firsthand. I know that’s like, ‘Well, man, that sounds kind of rough.’ But truth be told, that’s an effective way to get a solution. I can feel if a player is too high. I can feel if a player isn’t wrapping my hamstrings properly.”

Kasper spent two years as a defensive quality control coach for the Eagles for the 2021 and 2022 seasons and rejoined the coaching staff as a safeties coach last offseason after one year with the same title for the Miami Dolphins. He ran a similar version of the drill in Miami and brought it to Sirianni because of an insistence that the players get more value “actually tackling a person” during practices.

Sirianni had a few tweaks, including adding a second assistant coach to emulate a blocker at the start of the drill, but eventually signed off.

After the team had 15 missed tackles, by defensive coordinator Vic Fangio’s estimation against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Week 4, they came back from the bye two weeks later doing the drill, which was introduced in training camp.

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Since then, Kasper’s taken his share of hits with the team doing the drill nearly every week. Fortunately for him, the team’s tackling has improved significantly since the early-season struggles, which means fewer times he’s grimacing on the mat.

“Not as much as you’d think,” Kasper said when asked how much punishment he’s taking in recent weeks. “Really, to be honest with you, because we’ve been fortunate that we’ve been a good tackling team this year and we’ve done [the drill] the right way.”

According to Pro Football Focus, the Eagles have missed 10 or more tackles just once since the bye week. The lone time surpassing double digits came last Sunday against the Baltimore Ravens backfield duo of Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry, but the defense even made key tackles in that game. One of those key tackles, made by Cooper DeJean on Henry in the fourth quarter of the 24-19 win, Sirianni said resembled the work the defense does in practice with one key distinction.

“To be able to tackle a body, and we don’t go to the ground, so this is an opportunity to do so,” Sirianni said. “It really looked like Coop’s tackle — now Derrick Henry is a heck of a lot bigger than Joe Kasper — but it’s a credit to our assistant coaches for putting them in situations.”

One season removed from fielding one of the worst defenses in the NFL, the Eagles now rank in the top five of several defensive categories this season with a physicality that traces back to uptick in practice sessions Fangio has advocated for since joining the team this offseason.

While the sentiment the veteran coach said earlier this week may have been the most playful version, Fangio has consistently harped on the importance of practice reps for a defense with an average age of 24.4 years old last Sunday.

“The more you practice, the more you play, you get better, in spite of what Allen Iverson ever said,” Fangio said jokingly on Tuesday.

Among players on the Eagles roster, Oren Burks may have the easiest adjustment to the increased amount of late-season padded practices the Eagles have held.

Coming from the San Francisco 49ers, Burks said his previous experience left him already accustomed to putting the pads on even in the weeks leading up to the playoffs for continuity entering the biggest games of the season.

“I think it was just establishing what the mindset of this year is going to be,” Burks said. “‘It takes what it takes.’ We’re not looking for an easy way out. We’re sticking to our process, and that’s been showing up every week the last couple weeks. For us to play the ball we know we’re capable of, that takes getting in the film room, getting on the same page, and that physicality that we talk about in putting the pads on. That’s showing up.”

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Burks’ comparison to the Niners’ practice regimen tracks somewhat with comments made by Javon Hargrave last year. Hargrave, a defensive tackle who spent 2020 to 2022 with the Eagles before signing with the Niners in free agency, said the Eagles’ practice habits were “more relaxed” compared to his new team’s.

Although Hargrave’s comments caught the ire of his former teammates, including former Eagles defensive tackle Fletcher Cox, there’s an inkling of truth there. The Eagles emphasis on load management under Sirianni has cut both ways in the last few years and is still prevalent in areas this season. The team had all 22 of its Week 1 starters healthy for Super Bowl LVII two years ago with a more lenient approach to Wednesday practices, and several players said Sirianni still finds ways to balance the tougher Wednesday practices with lighter sessions at other points of the week.

“I think Nick really stood back and said, ‘We didn’t work enough at all last year,’” Mailata said. “So that’s been the emphasis.”

With a younger team and a coordinator in Fangio who has consistently pushed for more reps for his youthful defense, this may be the first time the Eagles use all of the padded practices the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement allows for under Sirianni. According to overthecap.com, the CBA permits teams to hold 14 padded sessions during the regular season with limitations on how many can be used during the final handful of weeks.

Eagles right tackle Lane Johnson said Sirianni came to the him and the team’s leadership earlier this year with the plan to use them all and to space them out more toward the back half of the season.

“You only have a certain amount, but we saved some for this time of the year,” Johnson said. “Because it is weird when you go from walk-throughs all week and not having hardly any full-speed padded [reps], it can catch you off guard. But I think we’ve done a good job with how we’ve done things this year.”

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Sirianni added: “We’ve had a couple more, that’s no doubt. ... I don’t want to correlate to this because you still do it, but if you’re a basketball player and you play once a week, it would be crazy if we didn’t shoot during the week.”

Aside from tackling drills, the team also has done one-on-one pass-rushing drills between offensive and defensive linemen during the parts of practice closed to the media, something most teams typically discard by this point in the season. Wednesdays generally are focused on the offensive and defensive line and the run game to take advantage of the time in pads.

“A lot of teams don’t do that,” Johnson said. “When you do walk-throughs all the time throughout the week and you only have full speed against pads in the game, it can kind of catch you off guard. Trying to get that in on a Wednesday can do a lot of good for you.”

While the current approach seemingly has yielded results, it’s important to note Sirianni’s previous prioritization of preserving players with lighter workloads late in the year was also a major factor in the team’s relatively healthy finishes each of the last two years. The new one may invite more injury risk. Eagles defensive tackle Jalen Carter suffered a shoulder injury in practice earlier this season but didn’t miss any game time as a result. Linebacker Ben VanSumeren suffered a season-ending knee injury in practice last week, but that was during the final practice session of the week and not in pads.

The team also has turned to resting a handful of veterans, including Johnson, Saquon Barkley, edge rusher Josh Sweat, and Carter for part of Wednesday sessions to preserve the group with the heaviest workloads during games.

“If you look at ’22 and how healthy we were, I think that’s something that you could very much look upon and be like, ‘This is the way to do it,’” Sirianni said. “Well, there are different factors with the 2022 team than there are with the 2024 team. The experience, things like that. So there are things that you need to continue to get better at.”

And while there may not be a Monday off in the coming weeks, Sirianni hasn’t ruled out the potential for it to return eventually.

Until then, Sirianni is hanging onto the response — genuine or otherwise — he got from the players in M&T Bank Stadium last Sunday when he told them Monday once again would be a workday, as it has for the last couple months.

“The guys were cheering. I don’t know if they were cheering sarcastically or not,” Sirianni said. “I was like, ‘Hey, we’re working tomorrow,’ and they were like, ‘Yeah! We’re working.’”

The Eagles play in Week 14 against the Carolina Panthers. Join Eagles beat reporters Olivia Reiner and EJ Smith as they dissect the hottest storylines surrounding the team on Gameday Central, live from Lincoln Financial Field.