NFC Notes: Brian Daboll, Matt Patricia, Ron Rivera, Commanders, Eagles, Giants

Commanders

• Nicki Jhabvala reports that Dawn Aponte is a potential candidate for EVP of Football Operations for the Commanders.
• Commanders HC Ron Rivera on not yet naming a starting quarterback for the final game against the Cowboys: “We don’t want to give them any head start on anything.” (Ralph Vacchiano)

Eagles

Eagles DC Matt Patricia explained why they dropped OLB Haason Reddick into coverage seven times in Week 17’s loss to the Cardinals, describing how the game dictated their defensive plan. 

“I’m always conscious of making sure that I get our guys that can rush to rush as much as we can. And sometimes the game dictates or the personnel packages dictate a little differently in those situations. Sometimes the hash can dictate a little bit on that, too, where the ball is lined up,” said Patricia, via Zach Berman. 

Patricia feels getting stuck in a long offensive series’ against Arizona impacted how they used Reddick. 

“I think that’s where I can do a better job of understanding that maybe we got caught in a spring of plays and sometimes that happens if you’re playing a really long series, sometimes it’s easier to correct that stuff, if it’s a quicker series, you come to the sideline and you’re looking at it like hey we need to do more of this. You get caught in a long series, sometimes that becomes a little bit more difficult,” said Patricia. “So, I have to do a better job in that situation of saying, okay, I got stuck in this or we got stuck in this, let me change it and let me get, you know, certainly a guy like Haason in the mix where I think he can help us.”

Patricia pointed out that the Cardinals’ offense got the ball out quickly and Reddick was sometimes dropping to help teammates. 

“Other parts of the game where that may have occurred, honestly, he’s probably dropping into position to help his teammates. He’s really good at it in the situations where they got us in some spread and some empty and kind of put us in some space game which was good on their part certainly from a scheme standpoint and created some extra space there for the coverages and for the quick pass game, which is — they are getting the ball out fast.”

Giants

Giants HC Brian Daboll wants to finish the season on a positive note and spoke about how the team has attempted to make big, downfield plays to pull out some wins as the season is winding down.

“Hey, big plays help,” Daboll said, via GiantsWire.com. “I’ll just talk about the last game because it’s the one we just played. I thought that Tyrod saw some things relative to things opening up and let it go and made the right decisions. Every game is different but he’s done that the last couple of games for us, which in turn helps. You skip some third downs and usually, it gives you points. Had one taken back on a penalty but those are always helpful to get into the endzone.”

“First, you have to understand, they’re professionals,” Daboll explained. “So, everybody has a job to do in this league. You try to do it as good as you can do it, try to prepare, take a lot of pride in your work, put a lot of time into it. They put a lot of time into their body, into their studying, they study in groups. This is a group of guys that have worked really hard. We haven’t got the results that we want, but the competitive stamina, we certainly talk about competing and finishing and being good teammates. Those are all important characteristics for our program. Again, not the results that we’ve wanted this season, but try to finish strong on a good note against a good team that we just played last week. But certainly you talk about competition and resiliency and toughness and finish, accountability, all those types of things.”