From the Hot Seat to Super Bowl: Nick Sirianni's redemption

I’m an idiot. I’m the dumbest person in the world. There’s a chance you’re also a total dumb dumb along with me. I thought Nick Sirianni should’ve been fired. Now the Philadelphia Eagles have won another Super Bowl and Nick Sirianni is largely responsible for it. I’m a stupid dumb idiot and I was wrong.

It wasn’t just once that I wanted Nick gone. After the 2023 collapse, I wanted Nick gone because I thought that he would waste a wildly talented roster if he got another. Then, after the Eagles lost to the Buccaneers in Week 4, I wanted Nick Sirianni gone again. I was wrong, and I was dumb to think that. If you thought that, you were dumb too, but that’s okay. Now is the time to repent.

Nick Sirianni’s success is undeniable

When the Eagles and Doug Pederson parted ways everything felt terrible. Dougie P. held a special place in all of our hearts: in 2017, he became the first and only head coach to win a Super Bowl with the Eagles. Three years later, the Birds ended the 2020 season with a 4-11-1 record, and life seemed like it was retreating back into the vortex of mediocrity, pain, and sadness. Pederson was fired, and the Eagles hired some jamoke named Nick Sirianni.

Nick started his career off on a bad foot. He had an introductory press conference that’s up there with the worst of all time. Then the 2021 Eagles started with a 2-5 record before finishing 9-8 and losing to the Buccaneers in the Wild Card round. It was cool that a first-year head coach made it to the playoffs, but the loss was humiliating.

Sirianni came back with a vengeance in 2022. His Eagles annihilated teams, and with a 14-3 record they made it to the Super Bowl. It was the best Eagles team that anyone had ever seen, but they lost to the Chiefs, and it was partially Sirianni’s fault. The whole thing left a scar that would seemingly never heal.

That scar was opened in 2023. The Eagles started the season with a 10-1 record, but it felt different. No one on the sideline ever looked like they were having fun, and the 10 wins weren’t the utter decimations that we saw in 2022. The season felt off, and it ended with a disgusting collapse. It was the epitome of a Super Bowl hangover. 

Everything was terrible. Sirianni and the Eagles changed defensive coordinators in December (to Matt Patricia), the locker room looked like it was in shambles, and the offense wasn’t able to do anything. It made all the sense in the world for Sirianni to get fired.

Then, in the 2023–2024 offseason, Sirianni’s role changed: he became a CEO head coach. At the time, it felt like a massive demotion. He didn’t get to choose his offensive coordinator or his defensive coordinator, and he could’ve easily been spiteful toward the whole situation. 

He could’ve seen this whole thing as a slight and either choked it all away or overstepped his boundaries—both of which are things coaches in that situation have done in the past (both distant and recent). 

Instead, Sirianni accepted it and bought completely into it. He became the players' coach. He became the guy and he listened to his players… specifically his offensive linemen when they came to him in the bye week and told him that the Eagles should run the ball. 

Did he yell at the fans after barely beating the Browns game in Week 6? Yes. Is that a bad thing to do? Yes. Is it respectable that he stood his ground? Also, yes. It’s not what Jeffrey Lurie wanted, but it’s apparently what the team needed. 

After that game, the Eagles went on to lose only one more game and to outscore their opponents by 254 points. For a coach to go from ‘hot seat’ to ‘Super Bowl-winning head coach’ is simply unprecedented. Those coaches tend to go 4-13 and lose their jobs, not 14-3 and win the whole thing.

It’s not that he’s an offensive mastermind; it’s that he’s real. ESPN’s Tim McManus had a story about Sirianni’s impact. After Super Bowl LVII, Jordan Mailata’s dad had some health issues and Sirianni showed real compassion. He genuinely cares about and loves his players and his players genuinely care about and love him him.

Take Isaiah Rodgers, who spent the entire 2023 season suspended for gambling: Sirianni hand-wrote a note for Rodgers before he started his first game with the Eagles. He said it’s not a generic note, and "It's real personal, like you know he wrote it from the heart." Rodgers takes that note with him and reads it before every game. It’s so much more than just a working relationship.

He connects with his players, which is huge because that’s been part of his core values. They started as, “connect, compete, accountability, fundamentals, and football IQ.”

Since then, it’s been streamlined to “Tough, Detailed, Together.” It might sound incredibly lame, but that’s what has made Sirianni and the Eagles function at such a ludicrously high level. He focused on these points and let his newly appointed defensive coordinator Vic Fangio and offensive coordinator Kellen Moore, cook, more or less.

There were a few instances early in the season where Nick said he was calling some plays, like the wonky fourth-down plays that failed (like in the game against the Falcons and the Jaguars). Sirianni learned and in the postseason, those calls stopped happening.

Instead of doing some variation of the Brotherly Shove where Saquon Barkley takes the ball out to the left, he would let Jalen Hurts take advantage of man coverage on A.J. Brown. These are the kinds of things that worked, and they worked because Nick kept adapting.

It was no longer a, ‘I feel like doing this thing because I think I can outsmart the laws of football’ and it turned into, ‘This offense works because my players are more talented, so I’m going to get first downs with my talent players.’ He didn’t just care about his players off the field, but he also trusted them on the field.

It’s unbelievable and unreal. He went from a doofus with the charisma of a mousetrap, to earning the trust and faith of a locker room after a historic collapse, to winning a Super Bowl. It’s absolutely unbelievable. Nick Sirianni is our guy. He might not get a statue like  Doug Pederson and Nick Foles, but his success is just as undeniable. He brought another Lombardi Trophy to Philadelphia.