Bye Week Behemoths: Eagles And Chiefs Excel With Extra Time
![Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid and Philadelphia Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni with NFL on FOX analyst Jay Glazer during Super Bowl Opening Night in 2023. Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid and Philadelphia Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni with NFL on FOX analyst Jay Glazer during Super Bowl Opening Night in 2023.](https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/c_crop,w_3140,h_1766,x_0,y_761/c_fill,w_720,ar_16:9,f_auto,q_auto,g_auto/images/ImagnImages/mmsport/eagles_today/01jjssnxxx9g3v1v36n1.jpg)
PHILADELPHIA - Bye weeks tend to be the domain of Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid.
Reid has been known for his meticulous preparation dating back to his 1999 coaching interview with the Eagles. He's also the winningest coach in both Philadelphia and Kansas City, the two organizations that will meet for the Lombardi Trophy for the second time in three years.
Over as large a sample size as you could ever hope for in the coaching ranks Reid coached teams are an astonishing 32-7 with an extra time to prepare. The future Hall of Fame mentor was 17-2 over his 14 seasons with the Eagles and is 15-5 over 12 years piloting the Chiefs.
When Nick Sirianni was a rookie head coach in 2021, he reached out to Reid as a sounding board for how to handle a bye week. Two years ago, Reid's Chiefs got the best of Sirianni's Eagles, 38-35, in Super Bowl LVII.
On Tuesday, Sirianni was asked about his idea to talk to the former Eagles head coach and kept to his policy of keeping personal conversations private although the now fourth-year head coach with the fifth-highest winning percentage in the Super Bowl era noted he was appreciative of the advice he did get.
“Yeah, obviously always will keep my conversations with other coaches, players private,” Sirianni said. “Always so appreciative of any coach that is willing to help in scenarios and situations.
"Hopefully I can pay it forward to other coaches that ask me questions that I can help them with at some point.”
Paying it forward has already started with a growing Sirianni coaching tree that includes Shane Steichen in Indianapolis and Jonathan Gannon in Arizona and could grow further with current offensive coordinator Kellen Moore now considered the frontrunner for the New Orleans head coaching vacancy.
Sirianni wins a lot with a 48-20 record in the regular season, a .706 winning percentage that is the third-best in the Super Bowl era and the sixth-best of all-time. He's also 5-3 in the postseason with a chance to turn an impressive .600 winning clip into a .667 one if he can solve Reid, Patrick Mahomes, and the Chiefs on Feb. 9.
With extra time Sirianni’s Eagles are 5-1, including a win at Kansas City in the 2023 regular season when both teams were coming off a bye.
This season's early bye week for the Eagles was a supercharged success. At 2-2 and coming off an ugly loss at Tampa Bay without A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, and Lane Johnson, the Eagles used the respite to scale back on offense that was minus-6 in turnover ratio.
The idea was to lean on superstar running back Saquon Barkley and the best offensive line in the NFL with the unintended consequence being a more conservative offense that became more risk-averse.
Quarterback Jalen Hurts had seven turnovers through four weeks (four interceptions and three fumbles) and only three (one INT and two fumbles) over the past 16 games. Not only did Philadelphia come out of the bye week with a win over Cleveland, the Eagles won 15 of 16 heading into Super Bowl LIX and a rematch with the Chiefs, including a franchise-best 10-game winning streak.
The only setback for the Eagles over the past four months was on Dec. 22 at Washington when Hurts was knocked out with a concussion less than six minutes into the game.
Through three postseason games, Philadelphia has not turned the football over at all.
Of course Sirianni’s one loss while having an extra week to prepare came in Super Bowl LVII against Reid and the Chiefs, who will arrive in New Orleans at 17-2 or 17-1 if you erase a Week 18 game against Denver in which the starters were rested.
Sirianni acknowledged a few tweaks have been made based on the Eagles' experience from 2023 in Arizona.
“You go through everything,” Sirianni said. “I won’t get into details there of what we’re changing, but after each week, you talk about what you can do better and what you did well. That’s a constant every Monday. That’s what we did after 2022 as well. So we have notes that we’re going through and that we’ve been going through. Couple tweaks here and there of what we will do differently, and a couple things that will stay the same.
"Of course any time you go through any situation like that, you take notes like that and you try to get better from each circumstance you go through.”
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