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Eagles special teams coach Michael Clay explains Jaguars kick return disaster
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- Eagles special teams coach Michael Clay explains Jaguars kick return disaster
Eagles special teams coach Michael Clay explains Jaguars kick return disaster originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia
On Monday, Nick Sirianni took the blame for the disastrous kick return that cost the Eagles a win against the Jaguars in London. On Wednesday, it was special teams coach Michael Clay's turn to take responsibility.
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After the Eagles had taken a 17-16 lead on a Jake Elliott field goal with eight seconds left, Ameer Abdullah's 53-yard kick return down to the Eagles' 39-yard-line gave Jaguars kicker Cam Little the opportunity to kick a game-winning 57-yard field goal with as time expired.
"I thought the players did really well for 59 minutes and 52 seconds of that game," Clay said. "In the last eight seconds, we didn't, and it cost us. And I take it to heart that I felt like I let people down in this organization that worked so hard to give us that opportunity to go win that game in London.
"But, again, you learn from all your mistakes. You learn with these scars that you'll have, but you move on from it and get ready for the next opponent."
The Eagles had a couple opportunities to get Abdullah down on the ground well shy of Little's crazy range. Smael Mondon dove but missed and Elliott tried to get in his way but didn't slow him down. Jonathan Jones finally caught him with one second left.
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"We didn't execute," Clay said. "They played well for 59 minutes, and the last eight seconds, we didn't do our job. At times we got too deep in our coverage, didn't get off blocks, didn't make tackles when we needed to.
"And that's more on myself than anything else. In terms of that scenario, you guys could cut it however you wanted. Nick made that decision. We have to go out there and execute as a kickoff team and get that guy down. Obviously, we didn't.
"We've got to get off blocks. We've got to make sure we get everything funneled in, keep it on our inside shoulder, leverage it out, and move on from there."
Eagles special teams have been very good the last few years under Clay, and the Eagles were very good covering kicks this year until Abdullah's 53-yarder, the longest kick return they've allowed since a 63-yarder by KaVontae Turpin in 2022.
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Even though Sirianni took the blame for calling for Elliott to kick off to Abdullah instead of having him kick into the end zone and forcing the Jaguars to run an offensive play to try to get into field goal range, Clay said the play is ultimately his repsonsibility.
"Obviously, you respect anybody that's going out there to jump on the grenade, so to speak," he said. "But it's not just him. I think he takes a lot of heat, which I respect. But obviously, I'm the special teams coordinator here, and we didn't get the job done.
"It's never one player, two players, three players. At the end of the day, it falls on me to get those guys coached up the right way to go make that play in that scenario. And I didn't do that. And you're going to learn from it. You're going to dwell on it, but you also got to move on from it, which we got a fantastic opponent in Carolina Panthers coming in. So you can (dwell on) it for the first seven hours or whatever, but then you've got to move on with life and get ready for the next opportunity."
Clay played for Chip Kelly at Oregon and first joined the Eagles as a defensive quality control assistant on Kelly's staff in 2014 before assisting special teams coordinator Dave Fipp in 2015. Kelly brought Clay to San Francisco with him in 2016 and he stayed there under Kyle Shanahan from 2017 through 2020 before rejoining the Eagles under Sirianni in 2021.
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He's a highly respected, highly regarded special teams coach who's had the Eagles near the top of NFL special teams rankings most of his five seasons here.
But the disaster Sunday will stick with him for a long time.
"Obviously, I had seven hours to think about it from London to here," he said. "Then you review it, see if we can coach it better, see if we can get the players to do better in terms of how do I present it to them where they understand, like, all right, this is where we're going to evolve and be better at. And where do I evolve and be better as a coach in that scenario if it does arise again that we are overcoming it and make the play."
One of the most painful aspects of the return is that if Abdullah gained five more yards before getting tackled, the clock would have hit 0:00, the game would have been over, Little never would have gotten the opportunity to kick and the Eagles would be sitting here 3-2.
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But Clay said there's no way players can know the exact amount of time remaining, and you certainly can't delay a tackle to allow time to run out.
"When you're in the heat of the moment, you're (only thinking), 'Let me get this guy down.' I don't think anybody's going to look up at the clock simultaneously, then get the guy down who's running full speed ahead.
"An extra second off at some point in the game, you're not talking about this, but that was a perfect storm to happen. We weren't able to execute in that scenario and it cost us a win."
