Can Eagles' Summit Save The Season?

Nick Sirianni and Jalen Hurts had "great moments" together during the bye week, according to the quarterback.

Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts (1) talks with head coach Nick Sirianni. / Bill Streicher-Imagn Images

PHILADELPHIA - In the rare moment the Eagles receded from center stage in Philadelphia -- organically or not -- the organization used the bye week and a brief Phillies postseason sputter to orchestrate a meeting of the minds.

It wasn't exactly the 1961 Vienna Summit where then-President of the United States John F. Kennedy and the leader of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev, the leaders of the two superpowers of the Cold War era, tried to find common ground.

It was important to local football fanatics and a notable sea change in the relationship between head coach Nick Sirianni and quarterback Jalen Hurts.

The time to fix a perceived rift, fueled in a one-sided manner by an intentional quarterback with a graduate degree from the Nick Saban School of Media Management, is running out, something highlighted up the New Jersey Turnpike when Woody Johnson pulled his Ambassador sash out of the drawer to decree Robert Saleh was done with the New York Jets.

A fellow Class of 2021 coaching hire with Saleh, Sirianni fended off my question about his coaching mortality like his was Bill Goldberg no-selling a jobber at the height of his drawing power as a pro wrestling monster.

Sirianni's public persona is all football and that leaves little time to ponder life's other hurdles when jostled out of bed in the middle of the night.

"You can say, ‘Oh, that’s coach talk,’” the Eagles coach said. “I’m not bulls@#$ing you. That’s how I live. That’s how I’ve operated. You are who your habits are and that’s how I’ve been operating for a big portion of my life.”

Fair enough but Sirianni, like all coaches, understand the nomadic nature of their chosen profession. As a 43-year-old man, Sirianni's South Jersey home is already the fifth change of address form he's had to file in his NFL journey after assistant stints in Kansas City, enduring the Chargers move from San Diego to Los Angeles, and predating his Delaware Valley run with his time with Frank Reich in Indianapolis.

Legendary Houston Oilers coach Bum Phillips once took off his 10-gallon hat to describe a coach's lot in life better than anyone else: "There's two kinds of coaches, them that's fired and them that's gonna be fired," Phillips once deadpanned with the timing of a well-crafted John Mulaney joke.

Regarding shelf life, Sirianni isn't exactly a banana yet. He's also not the Twinkie that's going to outlast us all.

"We're all renting space," is a familiar refrain you'll hear in an NFL locker room.

Part of Sirianni's remaining rope is Jeffrey Lurie, who doesn't want to spend his later years known as an owner like Johnson making rash decisions so early in a season. A setback to the moribund Browns on Sunday isn't sinking the Eagles' coach but it will decrease the margin for error because Sirianni has 13 games to figure this all out.

The good news is that the Eagles are not 0-4. They are 2-2 and they got there without A.J. Brown for three games and added DeVonta Smith and Lane Johnson to that absence in Tampa.

All three are returning post-bye so Sirianni's got talent, albeit top-heavy talent, proven veteran coordinators who've seen a thing or two, and now an open avenue with the QB to repair whatever needed to be repaired,

Unprompted Hurts said Wednesday that he had “great moments with Nick,” though predictably derailed any attempts to understand what those moments were.

“We’re the two leaders of the team and I’m happy and fortunate that we were able to come together in harmony and have the same goal in mind in trying to get this thing right," Hurts said. "I have a ton of confidence in him, a ton of confidence in what he brings and everything he’s been able to accomplish.

"Just press on. Everybody goes through different moments. Everybody experiences adversity. But we’ve experienced different levels of adversity together, and we’re excited for what’s to come.”

Sirianni called the effort both organized and organic.

"You start with conversations," Sirianni said. "... So you have some things planned out, but also, conversations and studies take to you different places."

The end game hasn't changed. It's win or else for Sirianni and Hurts, because of the nature of his contract, is 12 to 18 months behind on that same sentiment.

Better to be aligned than not.

MORE NFL: Browns' DC Knew The Eagles Had Something In Jalen Hurts