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Nick Sirianni Says Eagles Will Talk About Bye Week Staff Changes, But He Won’t “Change Just to Change”
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Nick Sirianni was asked about making some coaching changes after the Eagles lost 19-11 to the Giants on Sunday afternoon:
Q. Are staff changes on the table during the bye?
Nick Sirianni: We’ll talk. Obviously, right now my job is to be there for our guys and to go watch the tape and go look through everything. I think we always think — we’ll do everything. I’ll do anything I can to help this team win football games. Like I said, I’ll look at myself internally first and then go from there. My job is to coach the players and to coach the coaches, and anything I can do to help this team win games, we’ll do. Everything can always be on the table, but I don’t think you change just to change because that’s what your record says that — you’ve got to look at what’s really real and not react to anything else. Again, I just don’t believe you just change just to change. If you have a strong reason to do things in anything, not just change, but in anything and you’re convicted on it, that’s how we’ll go about our business.
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Q. When you contemplate things like potential staff changes, what are the factors?
Nick Sirianni: I’m just looking at everything right now. What can we do to help our team get better? I don’t have a playbook in that matter of anything like that. You just look at everything, and you make the best decisions that you can for the football team and that’s what we’ll do. But again, you just don’t change just to change. You go through everything, and whether it’s that question or whether it’s what Jeff [McLane] asked me with simplifying (the offense to make it easier for the players) or anything like that, we’re looking for everything we can do to help our guys perform better, to help them play at the best of their abilities. That’s our jobs as coaches.
He’s not gonna come out and say “great question, thank you, and yes, I am thinking about shit canning Sean Mannion.”
But it’s not a linear decision making process anyway, because you have a multi-layered dud of a season. Not only does the coaching look poor, but they also have a bunch of practice squad and preseason guys out there. They’re down Jalen Hurts, DeVonta Smith, Dontayvion Wicks, and Lane Johnson. Cam Jurgens was traded. What’s the offensive staff supposed to do? They didn’t even get a month of QB1 and WR1 and ever since they’ve been trying to make it work with Tanner McKee, rookie Makai Lemon, Darius Cooper, Drew Kendall, Markell Bell, Elijah Mitchell, and now Joe Milton. Saquon Barkley isn’t close to 100%. The tight end room kinda stinks. Tank Bigsby and Will Shipley would make a difference, and they’re also out.
It’s fair to ask how you make any kind of real determination about the offensive coaching staff when they got maybe three games of a decent roster before things started falling apart. It’s certainly conceivable that Mannion is clueless and the roster is also terrible/decimated because more than one thing can be true. But it makes it harder to sell the firing of guys who were out there trying to beat the Panthers, Cowboys, Commies, and Giants with players who would normally get the bulk of their snaps in August, playing on NBC 10 with Scott Graham and Ross Tucker on the call.
Whether or not the Eagles decide to fire somebody depends on what the timeline actually is. We don’t know. Do Jeffrey Lurie and Howie Roseman want to blow it up and start over, the same way they did with Doug Pederson and Carson Wentz after the 2020 season? If that’s the case, Nick goes, the offensive staff probably goes with him, and Vic Fangio likely retires. But if Howie and Jeffrey are thinking they’d like to commit to Jalen Hurts, they accept this as a lost season and run it back next year with the roster holes patched, allowing continuity for a young-ish offensive staff that was dealt a difficult hand in 2026. That speaks to what Nick was saying, that you “don’t change just to change.”
We haven’t had enough time to get a real read on Mannion and Josh Grizzard, too, but we know what Sirianni is. We know his strengths and his weaknesses, and his resume speaks for itself, but the Birds weren’t afraid to fire the only other guy to win a Super Bowl here.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com