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Hiring Nick Sirianni was a mistake. That’s undeniably how it looked on his first day on the job. It was bad enough that he was an unknown replacing a Super Bowl-winning coach. But he also looked unprepared and uncomfortable in his first press conference. He gave long, rambling answers that made little sense and struggled with some of the names.
That wasn’t just an outside perspective or the view of a skeptical Philadelphia media either. It was the view of the Eagles players. As Brandon Graham recalled last year, “He said all the wrong things.”
Four years later, nobody really remembers much of what Sirianni said. Because since then he’s done almost everything right.
That’s why Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie announced on Monday that he had signed the 43-year-old Sirianni to what surely is a lucrative, multi-year contract extension, saying he has “embodied everything we were looking for in a head coach since we hired him four years ago.” He has gone 48-20 in the regular season, taken his team to the playoffs in all four years, and led them to the Super Bowl twice in the past three.
That was all capped off, of course, back in February when the Eagles blew out the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 in Super Bowl LIX — Philadelphia’s first since 2016, when the Eagles were still coached by Doug Pederson, the man Sirianni replaced. The Eagles, by the way, built a statue of Pederson outside their home stadium.
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It’s inevitable, and yet incredible, that they’ll build one for Sirianni someday, too.
It’s incredible because even after all his winning, Sirianni rarely gets the credit he deserves for the budding dynasty he’s helped build in Philadelphia. He has the sixth-highest career winning percentage in NFL history. He’s the first NFL coach ever to reach the playoffs four times, win two conference titles and a Super Bowl in the first four years of his career.
Yet, more often than not, he’s viewed as the caretaker for the team that GM Howie Roseman built. Sirianni admittedly inherited a team loaded and ready to win when he was hired in 2021. And no other GM has been better at locking up his own stars and key players, or more aggressive in making necessary and expensive additions, than Roseman has been.
But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to coach a team of stars and manage a room full of gigantic egos. Nor is it easy to balance an ever-changing staff that has seen three coordinators plucked for head coaching jobs in the past three years. Sirianni deserves credit for that, just like he deserves credit for helping to build an outstanding player development system. He has loaded his staff with outstanding position coaches, and he’s a master of quickly working in the young players Roseman drafts.
That’s a big part of what has become a pipeline of young talent in Philadelphia’s system. It’s why when one player gets hurt, there’s always someone else ready to step in. And when one player gets too old or too expensive for the Eagles’ plans, they often don’t have to search outside their own locker room for a replacement. Because Sirianni has helped make sure that the next generation is always ready.
He won over Roseman with that. He won over his players both with his aggressive nature and nurturing nature. And he’s won over the tough city of Philadelphia with an in-your-face persona that rubs everyone else in the league the wrong way — which, of course, endears him to Philly fans even more.
And all of that helped him win over an owner who, after watching a 10-1 team lose six of its last seven games in the 2024 season, gave some serious thought to firing Sirianni just 16 months ago.
“As an organization, we have always strived to create a championship culture of sustained success,” Lurie said in a statement on Monday. “Nothing is more important to fostering such an environment than having tremendous leadership. “Nick has embodied everything we were looking for in a head coach since we hired him four years ago. His authentic style of leadership, football intelligence, passion for the game, and growth mindset have helped to bring out the best in our team.”
Eagles celebrate Super Bowl LIX win at White House
He’s right about that, even though Sirianni really had to grow on them all. His awkward opening press conference was really just an appetizer for his critics in that first year. He earned more puzzled looks at his first scouting combine when he used Zoom calls to challenge prospects to games of Rock, Paper, Scissors. And then, when the Eagles got off to an ugly 2-5 start in his first season, he tried to motivate them with a picture of a flower, proudly telling them, “The roots are continuing to grow out, and the only way they continue to grow is if we water, we all fertilize, we all do our part. … So when it’s time to pop, it’ll pop.”
At that point, the city of Philadelphia was rolling its collective eyes. The media seemed done with him. His players weren’t sure what to make of him at all. Sirianni was turning into a national punchline, with many predicting that after his first season he’d be done.
Instead, it was just the first of many times Sirianni would be underestimated and overlooked, which most in the NFL still do. He rarely appears on any list of the league’s best coaches, even though his record and results insist that’s absolutely where he belongs.
The Eagles know it, though. Maybe that’s because he’s the type of coach that only they could love. They don’t care that his methods are quirky, that he acts like a crazy man at times on the sidelines, or that he’s not afraid to get into it with the media or fans. They learned to love it all because they love winning.
That, of course, is always the most important thing. And winning is all that Sirianni seems to know.
Ralph Vacchiano is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He spent the previous six years covering the Giants and Jets for SNY TV in New York, and before that, 16 years covering the Giants and the NFL for the New York Daily News. Follow him on Twitter at @RalphVacchiano.
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