Nick Sirianni ceded some control but knows it’s on him if the Eagles ‘don’t win enough’
“My plan is to make Mr. Lurie know he made the right decision by bringing me back,” the Eagles coach said.
The Eagles, coach Nick Sirianni said, spent “the appropriate amount of time” diagnosing and learning from what went wrong during their disastrous finish to last season. When you start 10-1 and then suffer the kind of collapse the Eagles did, losing six of their final seven games, including a 23-point loss in a playoff game, there’s a lot to assess and more time to do it.
“While everyone was playing in the playoffs, where we wanted to be, we had more time to evaluate,” Sirianni said.
The first part of the evaluation was above Sirianni’s pay grade: the decision to bring him back or move on. Of course, the Eagles elected to bring Sirianni back for a fourth season. But after that was out of the way, there was a lot to dive into.
For the second consecutive offseason, the Eagles would be looking for new offensive and defensive coordinators. The offense, the one Sirianni owned, had gotten “stale,” the coach said. So major move No. 1 was to release control of his baby.
Sirianni hadn’t called plays since midway through his first season coaching the team, as the coordinators — Shane Steichen and then Brian Johnson — called Sirianni’s plays and coached his scheme. Part of the initial offseason evaluation was the realization that it was time to move on. The Eagles brought in Kellen Moore to revamp their offense, and on the other side of the ball they brought in veteran guru Vic Fangio to lead the defense.
A coach in the NFL has his hands on everything and is responsible for every failure, but Sirianni’s second chance with the Eagles — maybe his last if things don’t improve quickly — is firmly in the role of CEO. He talks like one, too.
During a session with Eagles beat writers at the end of minicamp in early June, Sirianni went deep on “core values” and “culture.” He spent time during this offseason talking to Dawn Staley, Jay Wright, and Rick Pitino — Hall of Fame basketball coaches — about those topics. His former Mount Union coach, Larry Kehres, was at the NovaCare Complex for a visit.
“I would just sit in my office with him and ask him questions,” Sirianni said. Those things were as important, Sirianni thinks, as ceding control of his offense.
“I won’t lie to you, that was hard, but I knew in my gut what was best for the team and I see a lot of positives from it,” Sirianni said of giving up authority over the offense. “I’m able to see things from a 30,000-foot view.
“Me being in that defensive end room is critical. Me being able to go in the offensive line room is critical. Me being able to go in the defensive room is critical. Me being able to step out of all rooms and have a conversation with a player who needs me at that certain time to be his head coach is critical, and so you do what you need to do. You do what’s best for the team because you love the team, not because you love your selfish reasons of what you want. And I really feel good about that and I feel good in the direction we’re going and I think we had a good offseason.”
Sirianni declined to go into specifics about what exactly went wrong at the end of last season. (“At the end of the day, whatever product is on that field is my responsibility,” he said.) But it’s easy to see where Sirianni and general manager Howie Roseman think the biggest problems were by looking at the offseason moves. Moore is bringing in a new offense, Fangio is bringing in a new defense, and those major moves alone, and those hires specifically, say a lot.
The “stale” offense also needed more playmakers, so Saquon Barkley is here. There wasn’t enough talent in the defensive backfield, so the Eagles used their first two draft picks on cornerbacks and brought back safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson. Devin White, Zack Baun, and Oren Burks were signed to upgrade the talent pool at linebacker.
There were other changes, too, and some that Sirianni said wouldn’t be as visible on the field. The Eagles will report to training camp on July 23.
Sirianni was asked in June whether he worried that the bad taste of last season would linger and how he planned to guard against that.
“This is a new team and all we’re concerned about is the 2024 Eagles,” Sirianni said. “We learned from last year. We went through our stuff and we learned things from last year.
“Saquon Barkley doesn’t care, in fact he was really happy we lost the last game last year against the Giants. Same thing with Oren Burks. Same thing with Zack Baun. Same thing with Devin White. This is the 2024 Eagles and our expectation is to enjoy the journey and get better daily. There’s nothing we can do about the past except learn from it. Dog mentality is not just moving on to the next play, it’s learning from what you screwed up and getting better from that.”
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Sirianni said he didn’t spend too much time thinking his job was in jeopardy when the season ended because it wasn’t in his control. But the Eagles waited longer than normal to hold their end-of-season news conference with Sirianni and Roseman, which allowed speculation to run rampant. Sirianni also met with Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie in a meeting he called “business as usual.”
“Now, us winning games and the product on the field, that was in my control and at the end of the year, with seven games left, I failed at that,” Sirianni said. “Sometimes you have to play the cards as they lie after that. I got another opportunity to coach the team. I’m grateful for that and my plan is to make Mr. Lurie know he made the right decision by bringing me back.”
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Sirianni and the Eagles made the necessary moves, they think, to right the ship. They were the moves of a team that still plans to contend for a Super Bowl, and Sirianni knows failure won’t fly again.
“It’s Philly. It’s the NFL,” he said. “At the end of the day, we have to win enough. If we don’t win enough, it’s going to be hard for me to continue to work here, and I get that.”