NEW ORLEANS – Nick Sirianni appeared as if he’d broken a sweat after winning his first Super Bowl.
But barely.
Following Sunday’s 40-22 thrashing of the two-time defending champion Kansas City Chiefs, the Philadelphia Eagles’ fourth-year head coach was cool, calm and collected in his postgame news conference – appropriate given he’s pushed almost all of the right buttons over the past four months but maybe also indicative of how he’s grown into his role.
“Outside world had an opinion on what was going on and everything there. And we just stuck to our process and got better from it,” Sirianni said of a team that finished 16-1 after a Week 5 bye preceded by a 2-2 start.
The Eagles’ lone loss since September occurred Dec. 22 at Washington in a game when quarterback Jalen Hurts was concussed.
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“I think, at the end of the day, you saw this team embrace adversity throughout the entire year,” continued Sirianni, his temperament amazingly even for a 43-year-old man who’d just reached the summit of his profession.
“Now it’s hard to say that when you’ve won sixteen out of your last seventeen, but there was adversity – there’s adversity constantly. And I think we did a good job of embracing that.”
So well, actually, that any adversity in 2024 hardly seemed noticeable given the myriad issues this team and its coach have grappled with over the years.
Sirianni infamously bombed during his introductory news conference in 2021. He was roasted for not running the ball sufficiently at the start of that first season. The sideline antics early in his tenure rubbed some the wrong way. There was the heartbreaking loss to the Chiefs in Super Bowl 57, a steady disintegration on and off the field down the stretch in 2023, and an ESPN report last summer suggesting a significant rift between Hurts and Sirianni – the latter’s job security often a major point of speculation in Philadelphia and beyond.
And yet we’re talking about a coach who is 54-23 (.701) – statistically, positively Belichick-ian – has gone to two Super Bowls and never missed the playoffs.
“It’s crazy,” said Sirianni, “sometimes we’re answering questions on how we win. It’s hard to win in this league. It’s a struggle every week to win in this league, and just because we’re not winning a certain way or the way people perceive that we should win doesn’t mean that we can’t.
“Long story short, you can’t be great without the greatness of others.”
And that’s become his constant mantra.
A coach who’s so often been in the spotlight – whether it be woofing at opponents, woofing at fans, for bringing his kids to the podium at news conferences – has successfully turned it around on his magnificent team and hardly been a story himself.
Aside from the fact that he’s now only the second Eagles coach to win a championship in the past 64 seasons, something even the great Andy Reid couldn’t manage in Philadelphia.
“I’ve been saying it a lot today and throughout the whole year that, ‘You cannot be great without the greatness of others.’ That applies to coaches, that applies player to player,” said Sirianni.
“This is the ultimate team game. And I know that it takes selflessness.”
And that approach was reflected by a team built in the trenches. Reflected by Hurts, a gritty QB who always prioritizes winning over all else – even if his stats, if taken out of context, would suggest otherwise. Reflected by running back Saquon Barkley, who piled up all kinds of numbers after joining the Eagles in 2024 but did so with a humble attitude that immediately made him beloved among his new teammates – and an advocate for his coach.
“A year ago, I probably despised him,” Barkley said of Sirianni this week. “But now our relationship has grown so much. He genuinely cares about players and that don’t get talked about enough.
“He’s an awesome person.”
Super Bowl 59 was something of a microcosm of Steady Sirianni. He certainly wasn’t happy with the offensive pass interference flag against receiver A.J. Brown on Philly’s first drive, a penalty that negated a conversion on fourth down and forced the team to punt.
“Mad about that at first but, again, these (officials) are making split-second decisions. And that was an All-Star crew out there,” said Sirianni.
“I thought they did a good job, regardless of what I thought about that one.”
From that point forward, the Eagles just steadily wore down the Chiefs on both sides of the ball, one line mauling Kansas City’s defensive front while the other constantly roughed up quarterback Patrick Mahomes without any blitz assistance.
“We do what we think we need to do win,” Sirianni said of the approach to rush just four defenders, “not what anybody else thinks we gotta do to win.”
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By halftime, the Eagles led 24-0, though their coaches were urging them to be ready for anything given Mahomes’ historical penchant for digging out of double-digit Super Bowl deficits. And that message apparently also sank in as the advantage bulged to 34-0 before K.C. finally got on the board in the waning ticks of the third quarter.
It was quite the culmination for an organization that appeared to be in crisis by the end of the 2023 campaign, when the team lost six of its final seven games – trounced at Tampa Bay in the wild-card round – before the retirement of team leader Jason Kelce.
But Sirianni said matters maybe weren’t as dire as they seemed.
“We had great OTAs, we had a great training camp, we were developing as a team. And just because the outside world tells you to feel a certain way doesn’t mean we were feeling that way, right? We knew we had a special team, we knew we had a group of guys who could do some special things,” he said. “It was just putting your head down and working.”
And just about everything did, Barkley seemingly the capstone piece the offense needed, and new coordinator Vic Fangio turning the defense into a juggernaut – one that beat down Mahomes constantly Sunday night. And that allowed the Eagles to do what they couldn’t in Super Bowl 57, a 38-35 loss to Kansas City.
“When we won the NFC championship game in 2022, there was so much joy – and I don’t want to say there wasn’t joy this year – it was like, ‘Alright, let’s go, we’ve gotta go finish the job now,’” said Sirianni.
“And that’s what we did.”
A job very well done by coach and team.
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