'We're In The Moment!' Eagles Coach Nick Sirianni Faces Toughest Test

"There's so many things we can't control," coach Nick Sirianni tells us in a wide-ranging interview. "All you can be is in the moment that you are [in] right now." And at the moment? Expectations have never been higher for the Philadelphia Eagles.

PHILADELPHIA - Skipping steps is something Nick Sirianni actively works to avoid.

The third-year Eagles coach understands the ecosystem surrounding his reigning NFC champions on the eve of training camp, however. His fans demand success and the media expects it. Even Eagles alumni have adopted Ricky Bobby rules ("If you ain't first ...'') for the 2023 version of Sirianni’s team.

SUPER BOWL CHAMPS is the ONLY acceptable results! 💚 https://t.co/MNt9gmfsbz

— Ike Reese (@Ike58Reese) July 21, 2023

It’s Super Bowl or bust in Philadelphia, a designation where only the foolhardy wouldn’t take the under. All the hype is understandable, though.

Sirianni's team was the best in the conference last season by a wide margin and GM Howie Roseman navigated the churn of an offseason with another Executive of the Year-type effort on paper so the Eagles are the betting favorites to return to the big game next February in Las Vegas. 

Add in the built-in hunger to finish the job after coming up just short of a Kansas City team many at the NovaCare Complex believe the Eagles outplayed in Super Bowl LVII and you have the ingredients for a cocktail Sirianni must turn into a tasty treat.

At 42 Sirianni has already logged 14 years in the NFL, long enough to understand adversity is always looming around the corner and hiccups are inevitable.

The quickest way to fail to reach lofty expectations is skipping the steps so many outside the building want to while settling into an entitlement mindset.

Through two full seasons as a head coach, two postseason berths, and an NFC championship, Sirianni has excelled at keeping his players in the moment. Every meeting is another step closer to the same message turning stale with those who've been around to hear it before, however.

"I have to find a different way of saying that and living that," the coach admitted in a wide-ranging interview with reporters before training camp. "... I can't have them turn me off. I have to find creative ways to teach that. Saying that is great. Showing them is better. Showing them different ways of the process is better."

The word "process'' has become a co-opted one in Philadelphia by another professional sports team in town. In many ways, Sirianni’s “process” is the polar opposite of what former Philadelphia 76ers executive Sam Hinkie grifted the city with.

Losing isn’t in Sirianni’s vocabulary and the best way to avoid it is to teach the idea of winning the day or attempting to get one percent better with each and every opportunity whether it’s a meeting, walkthrough, or practice.

That may all sound simple and cliche. For coaches, though, teaching younger players how to navigate “the grind” grows more difficult with a generation that has grown up with the immediacy of technology and the short attention spans it can generate.

"I knew what my dad would say if I was painting the house,” Sirianni said. “... I painted the house and I didn't put a coat of paint. ... or the multiple coats of paint, whatever you do, I'm not painting any house. I knew what he'd say: 'If a job is worth doing, it's worth doing right.'”

The foundation is the most important part of any structure, be it literal or figurative.

“What you hope happens when the time comes where it's like, 'I'm tired today. I'm not going through the process today.' You hope that your dad's in your head or I'm in the head saying 'It's all about the process, it's all about the process,’” explained Sirianni.

For the first time in Sirianni's head-coaching life, he's had to replace some of the coaches closest to him preaching his message, starting with well-regarded coordinators Shane Steichen and Jonathan Gannon, who both got head-coaching jobs with Indianapolis and Arizona, respectively.

"I miss them," Sirianni admitted. "... They've become good friends of mine so I miss them. ... Just like I miss Javon Hargrave or like I miss Kyzir White. You can't preach connect, connect, connect and not preach it but do it and then not miss the guys you've built this connection with.

"It just is what it is."

With a coaching tree already blooming brightly after two years, Sirianni has taken immense pride in coaching his own assistants and preparing them for the next step in their personal ambitions.

The Eagles coach also lost well-regarded secondary coach Dennard Wilson after the difficult decision to go outside the organization and tab Sean Desai as the replacement for Gannon, as well as emerging young linebackers coach Nick Rallis, who left with Gannon to be the DC with the Cardinals.

Sirianni didn't have a prior relationship with Desai but the coach understands what he wants defensively. A CEO coach, Sirianni approaches the defense with his own offensive perspective and wants what he believes makes things most difficult for him and his offensive staff: limiting explosive plays.

Through his own studies, Sirianni has found the two things that correlate to winning most, something he calls double positives – those explosive plays and the turnover margin. Win those two categories and lightning has to strike to lose a football game.

Sean McVay, Kyle Shanahan, Matt LaFleur, and Kevin O’Connell are just a few of the other offensive-mined coaches in the NFL who’ve been asked which defensive coach has the most difficult scheme to read and attack. All of them and Sirianni have the same answer: Vic Fangio, the current Miami defensive coordinator and former Eagles’ consultant in the two weeks leading up to Super Bowl LVII.

The timing of Gannon’s departure didn’t allow Philadelphia to make the seamless transition to Fangio himself so Sirianni tabbed Desai, a direct disciple of the Fangio philosophy the head coach wants run in Philadelphia.

"There's differences. And it's not major differences, but there's definitely differences," Sirianni said when discussing Gannon vs. Desai. "One thing that we're going through now is … there's things that Gannon knew that my vision for the defense.”

Sirianni isn’t like a lot of NFL head coaches who specialize on one side of the football and hand the keys of the other side to what is essentially a co-head coach without the ancillary off-the-field responsibilities. The Eagles’ mentor wants his fingerprints all over his team.

“Am I an expert at defense? No. But am I the head coach and look at it [from] an offensive point of view,” he said. “And so there are visions I have for the defense of what I want things to look like in scenarios.

“And that typically is more so in situational football than anything."

Gannon wasn't particularly popular in Philadelphia despite putting together the No. 2 defense in the NFL, the No. 1 passing defense, and his unit becoming just the fourth team in NFL history to generate 70 sacks. Most of the angst stems from the Eagles’ defensive collapse in the second half of the Super Bowl, and the tampering allegations during the Super Bowl bye week first-year Arizona GM Monti Ossenfort copped to.

Sirianni, however, does not share in the critical assessments of his former aide.

"Gannon and I had a ton of reps together," said Sirianni. "You're going back to our Indy days of all the situations that we've been through. And so, that's just me being diligent to make sure that the things that I require out of our defense or the way that I want them to be.”

An NFL source told SI.com’s Eagles Today that the tipping point between Wilson, who is now in Baltimore as John Harbaugh’s secondary coach, and Desai is that the former wanted to deviate too far from Sirianni’s preferred Fangio-esqe vision that Gannon ran and Desai will continue.

“I hired Sean because I thought he was the best guy for the job and I know he was super ready to be the coordinator,” Sirianni said. “He's done a phenomenal job to this date. So I'm excited about it.

“I looked at it as an opportunity to say, ‘Hey, how do we get better from this?’ Gannon was a great coach. Got himself a head coaching job from it. How do we get better from this? How do we improve? Just like when a player leaves. How can we get better from there?”

Connecting with Desai was an ongoing process through the spring and summer for Sirianni. "It's on my to-do list to do every day," he said.

The to-do list is Sirianni’s “methodical way of going about the process each day.”

“That doesn't mean like the process of how you study tape, that's part of it. The process of what you do in an OTA, but it's the process of how you communicate,” Sirianni explained. The coach then gave a few examples of what he wanted to accomplish:

“On my to-do list [coming up], 'Bring two players to the office just to talk with them.' I'm always connecting with the offensive coaches 'cause I'm always in their meetings, right, and so, 'Connect with a special teams and defensive coach today.' 'Have a meaningful conversation with a player on the field,' 'Eat lunch with a player or coach.'”

Putting pen to paper is important for the coach in an effort to button up the smallest of details.

"I gotta write everything down,” he said. “You can't (preach) the process if you're not intentional about what it is.”

On offense, it's a bit smoother for a number of reasons including less attrition from a personnel perspective and because the new OC, Brian Johnson, was elevated from quarterbacks coach where he worked day to day with the face of the franchise Jalen Hurts.

Sirianni also still has his right-hand man and consigliere Kevin Patullo as passing game coordinator and associate head coach, not to mention this is a Sirianni-authored offense as a whole even if he gave up play-calling to Steichen and now Johnson.

"The offense – we're going to have new wrinkles and things like that. But all the coaching points of the offense remain exactly the same," the coach said. "... To me, there's no change there, except some person who’s calling the plays is different. ... Jalen [Hurts] has the same structure, the same everything.

"... It's the same, it’s the exact same. The process is the same, the infrastructure is the same. Everything's exactly the same. I don't look at that one that way. As long as I'm here, it's going to be that for the offense, which is important for your quarterback. It's our offense, and it's going to continue to develop."

The Eagles as an organization have been through this kind of coaching attrition before. In the Andy Reid era, things got tougher as more and more members of his now-legendary 1999 staff furthered their careers, and when Doug Pederson lost Frank Reich and John DeFilippo after Super Bowl LII, the organization struggled with the next steps before rifts concerning the staff sunk the only Lombardi Tophy-winning coach in franchise history.

Think of it like the office Xerox machine. With good coaching staffs, the copy is rarely as sharp as the original and each generation of the copy loses a little bit more luster from there.

The road back to the Super Bowl is in reach for the Eagles but the path there is going to be far more treacherous.

"There's so many things we can't control. There's so many things," Sirianni admitted. "And so we try to control what we can control. ... All you can be is in the moment that you are [in] right now."

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-John McMullen contributes Eagles coverage for SI.com's Eagles Today and is the NFL Insider for JAKIB Media. You can listen to John, alongside legendary sports-talk host Jody McDonald every morning from 8-10 on ‘Birds 365,” streaming live on YouTube. John is also the host of his own show "Football 24/7 and a daily contributor to ESPN South Jersey. You can reach him at jmcmullen44@gmail.com or on Twitter @JFMcMullen