Football
Nick Sirianni clearly is a phoenix.
Following the stunning collapse over the final seven weeks of the 2023 Eagles season, a campaign in which the Eagles went from an unhappy 10-1 Super Bowl favorite to maybe the most inept team in football over their 1-6 finish, the knives were out for the head coach.
I should know. I was holding one of them.
It isn’t just that the Eagles fell apart. There was dissention in the locker room. The defensive coordinator was demoted midseason for an inept replacement. The offense suddenly lost the ability to handle even the simplest blitzes. The quarterback was sparring with his head coach and some of his players.
Even though Sirianni had led his team to the Super Bowl the season before, it was as ugly as it gets, and it was clear major changes were coming. New coordinators would undoubtedly be hired, and it seemed impossible to me that you could keep the existing head coach while stripping away more of his power and giving it to a new offensive coordinator while also asking him to run a locker room whose culture had fallen apart down the stretch.
How was this going to work? Why not wipe the slate clean and start anew?
Owner Jeffrey Lurie and GM Howie Roseman went the other way. They kept Sirianni in the fold, likely with the understanding that he had one season to fix what was broken as a CEO-head coach.
It didn’t look good through the first four weeks. The Eagles went to Tampa and got embarrassed 33-16 to fall to 2-2 heading into the bye wee. After the week off, they struggled to beat the hapless Browns at home, 20-16, and Sirianni was caught jawing with fans walking off the field. The atmosphere amongst much of the fanbase toward Sirianni was toxic.
I should know. I was one of them.
Fast forward nine weeks. The Eagles have not lost since that bye week, running off a franchise record 10 wins in a row following their 27-13 rout of the 10-win Pittsburgh Steelers. They have outscored their opponents 263-135 over their last nine games and outgained them 376-239 yards on average during their 10-game winning streak. They have the No. 1 defense in the NFL in terms of yards allowed and 2nd-best in terms of points allowed.
Perhaps most impressively, after a week in which the team was embroiled in the kind of personality-driven discord that was part of what doomed them in 2023, Sirianni ably guided the team through it all with aplomb.
The wide receiver questions the passing game and the star defensive end suggests his franchise QB and WRs aren’t buddies anymore? All that distraction and noise which, to be clear, did not originate in the media, was handled beautifully by Sirianni, leading to one of the most well-coached victories we’ve seen during his four seasons in Philadelphia.
This week was Sirianni’s biggest test of the season, and he responded to the challenge.
Look, I wanted Nick Sirianni fired at the end of last season, and yeah, I would have been happy to see him go after the Browns game, too.
I was wrong.
The numbers speak for themselves. The guy just wins.
Sirianni’s career winning percentage of .708 ranks 5th all-time in NFL history. Only Guy Chamberlin, John Madden, Vince Lombardi and George Allen are better. His 46-19 record as head coach of the Eagles gives him the highest winning percentage among all active head coaches.
I don’t know what really happened last year after that 10-1 start. Maybe they were just exhausted from a long and ultimately crushing Super Bowl run. Maybe they didn’t know how to perform under the weight of their own crushing expectations. Maybe everybody just had to grow up a little bit.
To overcome all that drama, to have two new coordinators forced upon you, and to be humble enough and willing enough to not only make work, but excel in the wake of it all, that’s special stuff.
There’s no doubt Sirianni gets over his skis from time to time. Heck, it happened on Sunday after a stupid Jalen Carter personal foul call on that ill-advised Pittsburgh fourth quarter punt almost gave the Steelers new life and resulted in the head coach needing to be handled by his fellow coaches on the sideline. Sirianni is an overly emotional guy on the field and it has gotten him in some trouble in the past. It probably will again.
But inside the locker room, it’s clear he is in control. The messaging coming from the team following A.J. Brown’s statements and the BG comments on WIP were pitch perfect. The team came out of the tunnel on Sunday afternoon determined to throw the ball with more urgency, and they did just that.
They’ve taken on an “us vs. them” mentality. Whatever works, guys!
Jalen Hurts, Brown, Devonta Smith, Kellen Moore and the offensive line also deserve a ton of credit for their performances, but Sirianni cannot be overlooked as part of the solution. They played their best game of the season at a time when things could have very easily gone off the rails.
Sirianni is by no means perfect. He has made some bad calls with regard to going for it on fourth down, passing the ball when they should have run it, a sometimes unimaginative offense and, yes, some behavioral issues on the sidelines.
It’s clear his positives outweigh his negatives. The Eagles have a realistic shot at the No. 1 seed in the NFC and a first round bye. They could be headed back to their second Super Bowl in three seasons.
OK. I’ll admit it. I was wrong about Nick Sirianni.
I’m glad I was.
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