PHILADELPHIA – With “Black Monday” looming around the NFL, embattled Philadelphia Eagles coach Nick Sirianni has highlighted what it means to be a successful NFL coach.
That may come as a surprise with the slings and arrows ramping up for Sirianni after a 10-1 start has slipped dramatically into a stretch of four losses in five games for his team.
Rewind to the 20-17 loss to the Seattle Seahawks in Week 15 and hindsight reveals that Sirianni jumped on his sword after a check at the line of scrimmage by Jalen Hurts went wrong, resulting in a game-sealing interception by Pro Bowl safety Julian Love.
Hurts decided to go for a shot play on a go route to A.J. Brown despite the cornerback playing about 12 yards off the star receiver. More so, Hurts didn’t hold Love in the middle of the field long enough, enabling the defensive back to race over and pick off an underthrown ball.
Brown admitted the mistake earlier this week and lauded Sirianni for his loyalty in protecting two of his star players and coming off poorly in doing so.
“I have nothing but respect for him because not all coaches do that,” Brown said. “He takes up for us when it has nothing to do with him and he gets the blame.”
Sirianni was asked about Brown’s penance Friday and why the coach felt the need to obfuscate what happened on the field.
“That’s what a lot of coaches do and that’s something I’ve always done and always thought when a coach did that for me was appreciative of,” Sirianni explained. “… There’s things that don’t need to be addressed to the outside world and that we keep things in-house.
“Just like a conversation with a player. I’m never going to talk to you guys about a private conversation I have with a player because that’s between us and that’s the same thing with a play.”
That said, the Eagles’ coach wants his fan base to understand things are being addressed behind the scenes.
“[I] also knew that coach was going to correct it after the fact,” said Sirianni. “When I played – and that was a long time ago – knowing a coach had my back was really important to me, and you’re a product of things you went through, and I know that’s important and I felt like that would be important for them as well and then we just move on and you correct the mistakes that you make, myself and the players.”
Sirianni then brought up one of his core coaching tenets: accountability.
“Our third core value is accountability and that’s a portion of it,” he said. “The only portion of accountability that I care about is what happens in this building.
“That was nice of A.J. to say that, he didn’t have to say that, because all I really care about is that the accountability takes place here. And that’s all that matters. All that matters is that we’re getting better as a unit and that we’re getting better as a team based off the mistakes we’ve made and based off the good things we’ve done.”
Sirianni further explained that a coaching perspective has to be far different from a fan’s or even a media member offering constructive criticism because the NFL is a results-based business.
Related: A.J. Brown Apologizes to Teammates: ‘I’m a Man, I Can Take Care of Myself’
As one current NFL coach once told me: “people don’t judge play calls, they judge play results.”
“Every situation is a little bit different,” Sirianni said. “[Jalen] made a great check in Kansas City, and I think sometimes it’s very easy to say, ‘well, this check worked. The check was successful. This check wasn’t successful.’ So there is no way you can look at it that way [as a coach], because then you’ll stymie the quarterback and stymie the players to be able to do these things in the time.”
Hurts’ check wasn’t necessarily wrong but the execution to take advantage of it wasn’t there.
” … We look at the result, right? You can do that in football all the time,” Sirianni said. “Like you see it all the time. Well, they should have done this here. Why? Because this one didn’t work. Yeah, you’re always going in with a why, why you would do something, but we obviously and ultimately are judged on the result, which is fair.
“That’s fine. We know that. But that’s not the same in coaching. You have to look at it and say, okay, this one worked, this one didn’t, and when is the right time to do it?”
Several teams around the NFL will start looking for new head coaches next week. It may be counterintuitive to point them toward Philadelphia and Sirianni just as the Eagles are facing a time of adversity but the savvy will understand that the coach is putting on a clinic when it comes to leadership and managing his players.
