Nick Sirianni overcomes his own adversity for another Super Bowl trip originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia
Nick Sirianni talks to his players about adversity often.
He brings it up in team meetings, before games, after games. He even talked about it in his press conference after the Eagles beat the Commanders 55-23 in the NFC Championship Game to advance to the Super Bowl for the second time in three years.
“This game is about overcoming adversity,” Sirianni said on Sunday evening. “There are going to be good plays in the game and there are going to be bad plays in the game. There will be good moments in a season and bad moments in a season. It’s about overcoming and embracing the adversity.”
Sirianni knows something about adversity.
He has faced plenty of it during the last calendar year.
The Eagles collapsed in 2023 and Sirianni’s job was clearly in danger just a year after getting them to the Super Bowl. The Eagles lost six of their last seven games last season, including a first-round exit in Tampa against the Buccaneers to cap off the tailspin. Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie clearly wasn’t happy and it took nine days before we learned that Sirianni would return — and with the caveat of having two new veteran coordinators join him. There were also the reports of a fractured relationship with the franchise quarterback, which needed mending.
If you put that all together, there was a lot of pressure on Sirianni entering the 2024 season.
And it didn’t start great!
The Birds had a disappointing 2-2 record entering their early bye week and lost in Week 4 to the same Buccaneers team that bounced them in the first round of the playoffs the previous season.
Everything that happened in the early portion of the season was viewed through the lens of whether or not the head coach was going to survive the season. That’s a tough place to be.
But the Eagles obviously turned things around. They have won 15 of 16 games and are heading back to the Super Bowl under Sirianni for the second time in three years.
He showed his players how to deal with adversity.
“Yeah, I think about, if I’m asking them to do something, I better be pretty darn good at it,” Sirianni said on Tuesday. “Whether that’s detail, whether that’s mental toughness – they don’t need to see me physically tough. I don’t need to be that anymore, but mental toughness, whether that’s connecting, those three pillars of our culture, that I better be doing those things like crazy.
“I don’t know, hopefully I provide a good example for them in moments like that. But I also hope that I provide a good example to them of blocking out the things that you can’t control and outside noise. Because there is always going to be outside noise.”
There was plenty of outside noise with Sirianni not that long ago and it wasn’t entirely without merit. The way the offseason went let everyone know he would have a relatively short leash in 2024.
The Eagles sputtered a bit early in the season and in the first game after the bye week, cameras caught Sirianni taunting a fan in the win over the Browns. It was a bad look for the head coach, who later apologized for his actions.
Those actions can sometimes be grating. They rub fans from other teams (and sometimes Eagles fans too) the wrong way and it’s understandable why that’s the case. Sometimes Sirianni has to rein it in a little bit but he still wants to be authentic. He’s an emotional guy who is always searching for that balance.
But he’s also a pretty good coach, especially for this team. And it’s time Sirianni gets his flowers.
Next season, Sirianni is set to enter the final year of the five-year contract he signed when he was named the head coach in 2021. Jeffrey Lurie won’t let Sirianni enter a lame duck season after a Super Bowl appearance. So it’s also time to give the man his contract extension.
Sirianni, 43, is just the third head coach ever to get his team to multiple Super Bowls in his first four years at the helm, joining Joe Gibbs and Mike Tomlin. He’s already the first Eagles coach to ever reach two Super Bowls and he’s the first coach to make the playoffs in each of his first four years and take his team to multiple Super Bowls.
Sure, the Eagles have talent and you can’t ignore that. Lurie and Howie Roseman have set up a situation for Sirianni to thrive — but he is thriving. You can knock him for having a bunch of talent but there’s a skill in getting a team to play up to its potential and Sirianni is doing that right now. The Eagles had one of their most complete games of the season to punch their ticket to New Orleans.
Another part of the criticism is that Sirianni’s role became more of a CEO-type coach this season. There are other CEO coaches in the NFL but they were hired with that responsibility in mind; Sirianni ended up here because the offense was too stagnant in 2023. Kellen Moore was brought in to take control of the offense.
The big question entering the season about Sirianni revolved around what his actual role would be. Sirianni during the offseason was asked, if Moore is in charge of the offense and Vic Fangio is in charge of the defense, what’s your role?
“The head coach,” Sirianni quipped back.
And, to his credit, he’s been a darn good one in 2024.
At some point during Super Bowl LIX, the Eagles are going to face some adversity — maybe they go 3-and-out, maybe they give up a score — and Sirianni will ask his players to overcome it.
Just like he did to get here.
“Again, just try to be an example and lead by example,” Sirianni said. “Culture is not words that are up on your wall or a T-shirt that you wear. That’s not what it is. It’s your habits. If I want our guys to have these habits, then I better have them myself and our coaches better have them. I guess I just try to live by that.”
Subscribe to Eagle Eye anywhere you get your podcasts:
Apple Podcasts | YouTube Music | Spotify | Stitcher | Simplecast | RSS | Watch on YouTube
