Eagles owner raves about HC Nick Sirianni with 'hot seat' talk silenced

Outsiders may never truly know if head coach Nick Sirianni was on the hot seat when his Philadelphia Eagles entered its Week 5 bye at 2-2 earlier this season. With that said, Sirianni has since silenced any talk about the Eagles possibly showing him the door by guiding the club to 15 wins over 16 games leading up to this Sunday's Super Bowl LIX matchup versus the Kansas City Chiefs. 

While speaking with NFL Network on Monday evening, Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie understandably offered high praise for a head coach who is four quarters of action away from hoisting the Vince Lombardi Trophy. 

"What we see now is exactly what we saw in the [hiring] process," Lurie said about Sirianni, as Kevin Manahan of NJ Advance Media for NJ.com shared. "Somebody who is incredibly passionate about football; somebody who has extraordinary attention to detail; somebody who connects as a genuine human being/leader, which is crucial in terms of the way we do things; somebody who is able to learn from their own strengths and weaknesses and attack them as well; somebody who has humility and, at the same time, confidence."

Lurie reportedly "wasn’t happy" with how Sirianni taunted Chiefs fans after a "Monday Night Football" victory in the fall of 2023. That Eagles team subsequently went from 10-1 to 11-6 before it suffered a wild-card playoff loss in January 2024. Later that month, a story claimed that Philadelphia "expressed interest in" legendary head coach Bill Belichick after the monumental collapse. Lurie ultimately stuck with Sirianni after Belichick "didn’t reciprocate." 

Sirianni once again generated headlines when he yelled toward some fans late in the Eagles' win over the Cleveland Browns this past October. After multiple reports detailed how his relationship with quarterback Jalen Hurts became "fractured" last season, he also became a target for critics. However, those two now seem closer than ever, and the Eagles are one win away from celebrating a Super Bowl title. 

"What we look for are a lot of intangibles and a lot of things that just are important to us as our culture, our organization and what we think correlates to having extraordinary teams," Lurie added on Monday about a process that resulted in the club hiring Sirianni in January 2021. 

As of Tuesday morning, DraftKings Sportsbook listed the Eagles as 1.5-point underdogs against the Chiefs. Suppose Sirianni leads his team to an upset win this Sunday. In that case, he will become a legendary Philadelphia sports figure, which is remarkable considering what many local media personalities said about him only a few months ago.