Many believed Nick Sirianni would not return as the Philadelphia Eagles head coach in 2024 following the team's devastating collapse where they went 10-1 before losing five of their final six matchups.
But to their surprise, the team kept Sirianni on staff and moved on from their offensive and defensive coordinators.
At the NFL's annual league meetings this week, reporters and fans finally got to hear the reason behind Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie's decision to give Sirianni another chance.
Before Lurie dove into that, however, he pointed out his extreme disappointment over how things ended last season.
“We go through a very, very intensive process after every single season,” Lurie said. “This season was no different. Extremely disappointing ending to the season.
“... But what we do is, and I insist on this, is there's no recency bias, there's no latency bias, there's no bias. Take a very hard look at exactly what the entire season looked at, what the entire history has been over the last few years for our organization, for our team and listen.”
Lurie noted that he not only listened to Sirianni but also took into account what players and general manager Howie Roseman had to say about him during their end-of-the-season interviews.
“The things with Nick I have to say were really impressive were wanting to truly improve the ingredients of the offense, truly improve who was going to lead, in terms of leading the offense and the direction it would go,” Lurie said. “Wanted it to be much more innovative, much more dynamic. Of course, bring the things that brought us a lot of success but very open to finding the best possible offensive coordinator.
“And the same with defensive coordinator. He’s an offensive head coach more but he recognized that Vic Fangio was somebody that would be an outstanding defensive coordinator for us. I mean we talked about his systems for years and all the people that you know he developed and now we have the guy that really kind of fathered the certain approach to defense."
Sirianni Was 'Hell-Bent' on Having the Best Coaching Staff
So it was Sirianni who brought offensive genius Kellen Moore and defensive guru Vic Fangio to the table that really caught Lurie's attention.
It was also Sirianni's overall drive and well-thought-out vision for the future of this Eagles team that kept him from losing his job.
“And so Nick's conscious desire to have top-notch coordinators under him really drove a lot of the strategy and he was hell-bent on making sure we had the best," Lurie said. "And you know, highly encouraged by his both analysis of where we're at, no excuses, basically a fundamental understanding of what needs to be better than the last five or six weeks of the season and not only a return to our championship caliber performance and execution, but improve on that too. Not just go back to what we were, but try to be better than what we were in the really recent past.”
Since becoming the Eagles head coach in 2020, Sirianni has put together a 34-17 record with three consecutive post-seasons (2-3) and a Super Bowl appearance for the Birds so far.
While that's an overall impressive coaching stint, he'll enter 2024 on the hot seat.
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