Eagles' Darius Slay on Matt Patricia and '2 marriages.' He slams Lions fans

PHILADELPHIA − Darius Slay knew the injury was bad when he kept thinking about what his "OG"s in his group text were going to say as he was helped onto the cart in the fourth quarter of the Eagles' 32-9 loss in the NFL wild-card round on Monday night.

"I told (the trainers), ‘Don’t bring the cart out because my OGs always told me, 'If your leg ain’t broke, you gotta walk off the field,'" Slay said, referring to former Detroit Lions teammates Glover Quin and Rashean Mathis.

"So as I stood up, it was like the worst pain I ever felt in my life," Slay said. "I couldn’t bend over. (Trainers) are like, ‘Slay, you gotta sit back down.’ I felt like a big shock, a lot of stuff going on.'

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"I was crying because I was hurting. And I was crying because I know, on that group chat, they’re gonna say I’m soft."

Two days later, Slay could laugh about it in the Eagles locker room because the injury wasn't nearly as bad as feared, although the teasing was.

So what was the official injury diagnosis?

"I don’t know. It’s real big-ass words." Slay said he asked the doctors to "dumb it down" for him, and the best he could deduce was "it’s like a small, little tear in the back," and that it would take 3-4 weeks to heal.

That means Slay wouldn't have played again unless the Eagles had reached the Super Bowl. And anyone paying attention to the Eagles' 1-6 slide to end the season following their 10-1 start could tell that wasn't going to happen.

After all, the Eagles fell apart on defense during that seven-game slide, allowing 30.4 points per game. During that stretch, Matt Patricia replaced Sean Desai as defensive coordinator, although Desai kept the title.

That didn't work, either, and Slay turned philosophical to explain why.

"Trying to find two identities of (two) coaches is tough," he said. "That’s like having two marriages. You know how hard two marriages would probably be to a household? Two personalities of two women? That’s tough."

How so?

"One might want her feet rubbed. One might want her shoulders rubbed," he said.

That's Slay's way of saying the switch was doomed from the start. And Slay said it has nothing to do with his past history with Patricia in Detroit, when Patricia was the Lions head coach from 2018-20. Slay demanded a trade after the 2019 season. The Eagles obliged in March 2020.

Both Slay and Patricia insist they have resolved their differences. Slay then gave a practical explanation for the lack of improvement under Patricia.

"It’s just hard for guys to adapt that late in the season from something they were doing from training camp all the way to Week (15)," Slay said. "Shoot, that’s a lot of weeks, and a lot of reps that we’ve been doing since camp. So to try to figure out new stuff to do, and build (Patricia's) type of identity in the defense, it’s just hard."

And here, Slay and the Eagles are in limbo. It's already expected that Desai won't be back. And it's hard to see Patricia returning as well. There was a report from The Athletic that head coach Nick Sirianni and general manager Howie Roseman are evaluating potential coordinator candidates.

The Philadelphia Inquirer is reporting that Sirianni is expected to meet with Eagles chairman and CEO Jeffrey Lurie on Friday about fixing what went wrong. It's also possible that Sirianni could lose his job, too, although veterans like Fletcher Cox and Jason Kelce scoffed at that possibility.

So could offensive coordinator Brian Johnson, who also came under fire for the offense's struggles late in the season. Johnson is also a candidate for head coaching jobs.

The Atlanta Falcons confirmed that Johnson interviewed with them Thursday. Former Patriots coach Bill Belichick and Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh also interviewed with the Falcons.

As for Patricia's return, Slay said: "I don’t know. Your guess is as good as mine. If it’s Matty P., I already know Matty P., as a person, as a coach, as a DC, so I already know what to expect from him. Whoever they bring in, or whoever they upgrade with or promote, I’m just looking forward to seeing our defense progress and get better."

And that brought Slay back to his former team, the Lions, with whom he spent the first seven years of his career. The Lions are getting ready to host the Buccaneers in the divisional round on Sunday. The Lions won their first playoff game since 1991 last weekend over the Los Angeles Rams.

They would have been the Eagles' next opponent had they beaten the Bucs. Slay knows what this means to the Lions and their fans, whom he chastised for booing Matt Stafford, who like Slay spent a large part of his career in Detroit before a trade to the Rams.

"I’m so happy for the Lions. I’m glad what they’re doing is going crazy over there," Slay said. "Playing great football. I’m excited for them. They deserve that.

"(Booing Stafford), that’s the only thing I don’t like. That’s kind of bad right there. I ain’t gonna lie. Detroit, man … y’all could have given him a little standing ovation for 30 seconds. Just knowledge of what he did for that organization for 12 years. That's bad."

Speaking of the Lions, Slay was asked if this was his toughest season. After all, the Eagles fell apart down the stretch, and Slay missed the final four games of the regular season to have arthroscopic knee surgery.

He returned in time to face the Bucs, only to injure his back and get carted off the field as his friends called him "soft."

"I ain’t gonna lie. I’ve been in Detroit when they were 3-13," Slay said. "It ain’t gonna get no worse than that. But it was tough because we had high expectations of ourselves as a group, as a team. That’s the only tough part about it because we didn’t go where we wanted to reach.

"We’re too talented a team not to get there."

In many ways, that is the epitaph of the 2023 Eagles.

Contact Martin Frank at mfrank@delawareonline.com. Follow on X @Mfranknfl.

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Why Eagles' Darius Slay compares switch to Matt Patricia to '2 marriages'