The Rebranding Of Eagles' Coach Nick Sirianni

A difficult end to the 2023 season had the Eagles coach rebooting to find the joy in his job through relationships.

Philadelphia Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni / Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

PHILADELPHIA - The 2024 Philadelphia Eagles are set to begin training camp next week, a ceremonial kickoff with a different feel for head coach Nick Sirianni.

Job security is always tenuous in the NFL, perhaps best described by one of the game’s true legends. Often patrolling the sidelines with his trademarked 10-gallon Stetson hat for the old Houston Oilers, Bum Phillips was known for his ability to throw around a colorful quote or two.

The father of famed modern defensive mind Wade Phillips, the elder Phillips’ most famous turn of phrase was about the uncertainty of his chosen profession.

“There's two kinds of coaches,” Phillips once opined. “Them that's fired and them that's gonna be fired.”

That reality isn’t news to those who’ve operated in a nomadic profession.

ON THE CLOCK

Take Sirianni, who turned 43 in June and is set to enter his fourth season as the top man in Philadelphia. 

Sirianni's Eagles stop is already his fourth NFL team as a professional coach and fifth city (after having bridged the Chargers' move from San Diego to Los Angeles) on what was a meteoric rise from quality control coach for Todd Haley in Kansas City to the big chair with the Eagles.

Go back to Sirianni’s start in coaching under his mentor and former college coach Larry Kehres at 23, and you’ll also find two more college stops – his alma mater of Mount Union, a Division III powerhouse, and Division II IUP – over two decades of coaching.

You don’t need Eagles' analytics whiz Alec Halaby to understand that’s 3.33 years per outpost, a number Sirianni has already surpassed at the highest level of his profession. 

The context is that most of Sirianni’s previous moves were fueled by ambition and the ones that weren’t were speed bumps on the road of that ambition.

For the first time in 2024, Sirianni is on the clock for a job he wants to keep in 2024 despite batting 1.000 when it comes to the postseason and having the all-time best regular-season winning percentage in Eagles franchise history at .667 (34-17) for an organization that was founded in 1933 and turned 91 earlier this month.

Such is life in a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately league.

THE MULLIGAN 

The answer to what Sirianni had done for Philadelphia lately is losing six of seven after a 10-1 start to the 2023 campaign and doing that in ugly fashion, seemingly with no answers or ability to fix the problems.

Former NFL Executive of the Year Randy Mueller boiled it down succinctly for SI.com’s Eagles Today.

“You’re job as an NFL head coach is to fix problems,” Mueller said.

Sirianni arguably exacerbated things last season with his tortured decision to move on from ex-defensive coordinator Sean Desai and failing to tweak his now self-described stale offense to better help a regressing Jalen Hurts deal with the blitz.

The bleeding never stopped and the 2023-24 Eagles were officially pronounced on Wild Card Weekend in Tampa against a lesser-talented team with one high-level team executive describing the Eagles’ performance during a 32-9 blowout as “f@#$ing embarrassing.”

The pressure of being an NFL head coach is unrelenting.

Yet, Sirianni had found a way to reboot in the wake of that collapse and still uncover the joy that got him to the height of his profession in the first place.

Sirianni’s dad Fran was a well-respected former high school coach in Jamestown, N.Y. When the Eagles coach was younger he remembers shooting hoops in his driveway when his father’s players stopped by the house just to pay respect to a mentor they admired. 

The younger Sirianni was moved by that and craved it for himself.

“I feel lighter in the sense of I'm finding why I got into this in the first place,” Sirianni said. “... I got into this because of the relationships.”

The result of failure was harsh, though, and the result was the scapegoating of the coordinators, along with a host of other assistants, with Sirianni losing any layer of protection moving forward.

“We know the job’s hard. We know that it's not easy and no one nobody in the NFL has an easy and everybody is cutthroat,” Sirianni conceded. “ We are, too. We want to go win, and that's the main goal. You don't get to have the joy of being a coach if you don't win."

 At least most don't.

“But I do, I'm finding that joy in it," Sirianni insisted. "And that makes it lighter on your burden. You know what I'm saying? I've really appreciated that this offseason being able to lead and lead man and have the relationships.”

POLITICAL SAVVY

Another hiccup in 2024 with what most are describing as one of the more talented rosters in the NFL and it will be end scene on Sirianni in Philadelphia, something the coach seems aware of.

To even get to the mulligan Sirianni had to be politically savvy enough to own the thought of “fresh ideas” on offense instead of waiting for that sentiment to be forced on him by team owner Jeffrey Lurie.

“You have to play the cards as they lie after that [collapse],” Sirianni admitted. “I got another opportunity to coach the team. I’m grateful for that and my plan is to make Mr. Lurie know he made the right decision by bringing me back.”

Being astute enough to understand he was going to be steered away from his own offense allowed Sirianni to own the decision and hand things off to Kellen Moore rather than Kliff Kingbury after the latter wanted to enact more change than Siriannni was comfortable with, according to an NFL source.

Moore was given his long-time right-hand man Doug Nussmeier as quarterbacks coach and another lower-level assistant in Kyle Valero. And that means most of the offensive coaching staff remains loyal to Sirianni, including his consigliere Kevin Patullo, as well as assistant head coach/running backs Jemal Singleton, receivers coach Aaron Moorehead, and tight ends coach Jason Michael.

Offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland remains a constant in the organization dating back to Chip Kelly.

LOVING THE GAME

Sirianni has spoken eloquently about his love of the game, something he first understood after getting injured as a player in college at Mount Union and pondered football being taken away from him.

Those who’ve been around Sirianni have been privy to another all-encompassing similar love for his own offense.

In the spring of 2023 after handing off the play-calling duties to Johnson, here's how Sirianni described it:

"No matter if Kevin Patullo is calling it, Shane Steichen’s calling it, Brian Johnson is calling it, Jeff Stoutland’s calling it, Jason Michael is calling it, Jonathan Gannon comes over and calls it, Howie (Roseman) calls it from up there, (Jeffrey) Lurie, (security chief) Dom (DiSandro), Julian (Lurie) [this is my offense,] Sirianni chuckled. "... I’m very particular and I know what I believe in, in the passing and the running game and offensive football.”    

REBRANDING

What changed was the basic instinct of survival.

“I love [my offense] but I think at the end of the day you have to do what you think is best for the team,” Sirianni admitted to SI.com’s Eagles Today. “And I think that’s selflessness. Regardless of how much I love something it’s what’s best for the team and in this case what was best for the team is that I brought Kellen in.

“I let him run with the offense.”

And voila, there is your 2024 branding for Sirianni: the selfless CEO coach who has forged a path to more solid ground in 2025 as long as the Eagles succeed.  

“At the end of the day I have to do what’s best for the team and sometimes it is hard, right? And like I won’t lie to you that was hard but I knew in my gut what was best for the team and I see a lot of positives from it,” Sirianni said. “ I’m able to see things from a 30,000-foot view. 

“...  You do what’s best for the team because you love the team not because you love your selfish reasons of what you want.”

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