Nick Sirianni is taking a different tack for the Eagles’ trip to London, and he’s doing it with the next stretch of the schedule in mind.
After Philadelphia’s 24-20 loss to the Los Angeles Rams dropped the team to 2-2 and extended its skid to two games, Sirianni said Monday that the Eagles will stick to a normal practice week at home, then fly overnight on Friday ahead of Sunday’s meeting with the Jaguars at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. The team is scheduled to land Saturday morning, go through a walkthrough, and then play the 9:30 a.m. ET kickoff before heading right back to Philadelphia afterward.
“We felt like leaving Friday was best for our team, this team, and with the schedule that we have with the weeks coming up,” Sirianni said."A lot of research went through it, you guys know, I've discussed these things with you about short weeks, long weeks, rain weeks, hot weeks, whatever it may be, international weeks, of how to kind of go about it.
“We're trying to get a full week's worth of practice in before we go up there. But we felt like, through the studies that we did and through some of the things that we looked at, all the things that we looked at, we decided on this. At the end of the day, I got to make those decisions and this is the decision I chose, with the help of great people no doubt.”
The big reason, Sirianni said, is what comes next. The Eagles return home from London and immediately reset for a normal week before hosting the Carolina Panthers at 1 p.m.
ET on Oct. 18.
There’s no bye in between, and the Dallas Cowboys follow after that in Philadelphia.
That setup is part of why the Eagles are only spending about a day-and-a-half in London before kickoff.
The approach is different from Philadelphia’s 2024 season opener in Brazil, when the team left two days early and stayed in a hotel for two nights before the game. Sirianni pointed to that trip as a different case, noting that it opened the season and included a 10-hour flight.
“We went through all this,” Sirianni said. “I don't want to get into too many specifics there. Like I said, we feel like this is giving our team the best chance to win, taking everything into account, jet lag included.”
Philadelphia will also be trying to manage the trip while dealing with a short-handed offense. The Eagles played Sunday without DeVonta Smith, Dallas Goedert and Lane Johnson, then lost Saquon Barkley early in the game.
Jacksonville, meanwhile, comes in at 3-1 and sitting atop the AFC South. The Eagles opened the week as underdogs.
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