Nick Sirianni Opens Up About his Job Status Following Playoff Setback: ‘I’m Evaluating Everything and Thinking About the Future’
It’s been almost a full calendar year since the Eagles fell short in Super Bowl LVII against the Kansas City Chiefs, but it seems like much longer.
It hasn’t been nearly that long since Philadelphia began a late-season meltdown that resulted in the Eagles relinquishing the NFC East crown and the No. 2 seed to the Cowboys.
On Monday night, Philadelphia completed that collapse with a 32-9 Wild Card round road loss to the Buccaneers. The loss to Tampa Bay didn’t surprise many the way the season unfolded. And there was speculation of dysfunction and in-fighting in the Eagles’ locker room ahead of the final week of the regular season, and what that might mean for coach Nick Sirianni. Inside the bowels of Raymond James Stadium on Monday night, Sirianni wasn’t fighting for his job, or even thinking about his future.
The Eagles’ Next Steps: What Comes Next?
“I’m not thinking about that,” he said. “I’m thinking about the guys. Again, there’s a lot of guys in that locker room, all the guys in that locker room, every single one of them that put their heart and soul into this. I’m not worried about me.” Sirianni added that there is no timetable for him to meet with Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie, although it’s inevitable. “Again, like I said, I’m not there yet,” Sirianni told reporters. “I don’t know exactly quite yet, wasn’t expecting it to end tonight. It did. I’ll put together a schedule here on the plane ride home and then tomorrow.” Philadelphia became the first team in recent memory to begin a season 10-1 and not hit the 12-win mark. And Sirianni placed the blame on himself for the late-season skid and the team’s inability to recover. “Obviously, we were in a big slide,” Sirianni said. “Anytime that’s the case, I always look at myself first, and I didn’t do a good enough job. And obviously, we lost five of the last six and lost today. It was almost like you couldn’t get out of the rut; we couldn’t get out of the rut we were in. And that’s all of us. We all have to look ourselves in the mirror and accept that and just find answers, find solutions. But obviously, you know, when you start 10-1, and then you get into what happened for us, obviously, the expectations were high. Expectations were even higher when we started off 10-1. And we fell into a skid. So, I’ll look at everything. I’ll look at, obviously, the play-calling. I’ll look at the scheme, I’ll look at practices, I’ll look at everything that we’re doing.”
There are already eight head coaching vacancies in the NFL and one that’s already been filled. After a horrendous finish to a promising season in Philadelphia, will there be one more?
