'Grateful' Eagles Coach Refuses To Spike The Football

If anyone deserved to spike the football coming off a Super Bowl LIX championship and a lucrative, multi-year contract extension, it was probably Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni.

The Philadelphia mentor enters his fifth season as the franchise’s head coach with a gaudy .700-plus winning percentage, and batting 1.000 when it comes to the postseason with two NFC championships and a Lombardi Trophy.

That all comes on the heels of a poor first impression during a Zoom video conference in 2021 and 1,001 more paper cuts along the way, whether it was dissecting Sirianni's sometimes emotional personality or failing to recognize what a CEO coach can mean to an organization.

Despite all of that, Sirianni handled his post-extension press conference seamlessly at the NovaCare Complex on Tuesday with a polished presentation that was quite the dichotomy from the wet-behind-the-ears novice in Year 1.

A more experienced coach comfortable in his own skin showed up, focusing on his professional acumen and how he and his players were able to handle adversity, bridging a 2023 collapse that had plenty calling for Sirianni’s job and into the second Super Bowl win in Eagles' history.

There was not even a hint of personal satisfaction from Sirianni, even if it’s richly deserved.

So my goal was the blunt route, finishing the presser by asking Sirianni to forget professional decorum. 

“On a personal level, is there any validation in a Super Bowl win or the extension?,” Philadelphia Eagles On SI asked the coach.

For a moment, Sirianni seemed a bit disarmed, but the football remained holstered at his side.

What followed was a calmness and sense of peace that only success can provide.

“You can either go at it and be like, 'Ah, look at me now.' But I don't think that-- I'm grateful for all of that scrutiny,” Sirianni said. “I'm grateful for that for multiple reasons. I'm grateful in the sense that it shapes you to who you are going to be. 

“God puts you through things and it shapes you to who he wants you to be.”

The doubt, the criticism, and the uncertainty are what shaped Sirianni, not the accomplishments on his resume.

“I'm going to be able to raise my kids and they're going to be going through things and I'm going to be able to look back at things,” said Sirianni. “There's another reason I'm grateful, I'm grateful for that in the sense as well of players that are going to have to go through that because no one's exempt from adversity that you go through in the challenges of the NFL.

“So, I don't think you can have a grateful heart for the things that you've gone through to shape you to who you are. And then on the other end, go, 'Oh look, what do you say now?' … And so that gratefulness for the scrutiny and for the adversity and all those things that you said, it's not validating.

"It is a grateful heart, more so than the validation of a contract or a Super Bowl.”