Nick Sirianni is One of Just Two NFL Coaches Remaining From the Class of 2021
Now that Robert Saleh was fired by the Jets, we find Nick Sirianni and Dan Campbell as the only two guys still left from the SEVEN coaching hires of 2021. Can you name all seven? Bet you can’t. Who would’ve thought Nick Sirianni would survive this long after that introductory press conference?
Is Nick Sirianni good? No. Is he refusing to get out of his own way? Yes. Is his head on the chopping block next? Absolutely. But you can’t say you aren’t a little bit surprised how long he’s lasted after starting 2-5 and making flower references. He took the team to the Super Bowl in his second year. We can say that was Howie and roster construction, but he still had to get the guys to buy in and believe in themselves and he did for that one season. People forget we almost had Josh McDaniels.
One thing I love doing is some revisionist history. Lets go back and look at some things people said when Sirianni was hired.
Here’s Eagles fan Adam Lefkoe crushing him on The Dan Patrick Show. I’m pretty sure Lefkoe tweeted about jumping ship to the Chiefs after the press conference, but I can’t find the tweet. So this will have to do:
Besides that soundbite and a couple on sports radio I was surprised to find NFL reporters weren’t really that hard on Sirianni, which I don’t remember being the case, unless some journalists deleted their columns from that year.
CBS Sports’ Jason La Confora ranked the seven coaches hired in 2021 based on ownership, recent success, front office, and roster. Here were the rankings:
- Brandon Staley
- Urban Meyer
- Nick Sirianni
- Dan Campbell
- Arthur Smith
- Rob Saleh
- David Culley
I’ll concede this is a fair spot for Sirianni, but you could argue winning a Super Bowl three years before this and being on a list with teams who find themselves drafting in the top-10 should net you first or second, but I won’t. Carson Wentz was still on the roster, we didn’t know what Jalen Hurts could be, and they were coming off a 4-11-1 season.
My favorite is definitely this blurb about Urban Meyer:
I suspect this ends up being a brief experiment – two years or so – but that would most likely be because Meyer walks (let’s just say there’s a history). But Shad Khan didn’t spend weeks trying to woo him to discard him quickly.
He ended up having the 4th shortest NFL coaching stint of all-time.
Jeremy Fowler and Dan Graziano at ESPN.com graded Sirianni a C and C-:
Fowler: C. Just seems like the Eagles telegraphed this one, firing Pederson for a coach who’s an extension of the Pederson tree, trying to fix Wentz without doing it with Pederson. Sirianni is an ascending coach with good demeanor for the job, so maybe that will translate in Year 1. My guess is some other candidates weren’t thrilled about this job.
Graziano: C-minus. I don’t know. If he can get Wentz fixed, the hire is going to look really good. But if that’s his primary responsibility, then how’s he going to do with the gazillion other things a head coach has to handle. I’ve heard good things about Sirianni as a coach, but it feels a bit early for him to have a job like this.
Connor Orr at Sports Illustrated was pretty positive and the questions he had for Sirianni to navigate the messy roster and losing veteran leaders in the locker room were fair:
The Eagles, like the Steelers, seem to have a pattern for what they want in a head coach. While Pittsburgh likes defensive coordinators in their early to mid-thirties, the Eagles seem to like untapped potential on offense, often hiring young coordinators or position coaches before they blossom into known commodities as sole play-callers, like Andy Reid once upon a time. Sirianni has the added benefit of working with Frank Reich, who was an instrumental piece of Philadelphia’s Super Bowl run and comes in with a playbook on how to work with the embattled Carson Wentz. Sirianni seems to be assembling a solid coaching staff that includes the critical retention of offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland and the plucking of Florida offensive coordinator Brian Johnson to coach quarterbacks.