New coach Sirianni has lots of debris to sort through
Nick Sirianni slept on it. Took a couple of nights to think about the potential drama ahead at the quarterback position, the aging roster, the limited chances to succeed and what happened to the guy who had the job before him.
Then Sirianni agreed to become the 25th head coach of the Eagles. He has no idea what he’s gotten himself into.
Sirianni’s former boss, Indianapolis Colts head coach Frank Reich, has all the confidence in the world in his pupil, called him “a born leader.” Just guessing there are a few things Reich didn’t detail, including the time the Eagles wanted to get rid of him the year before their Super Bowl parade, if you believe the scuttlebutt.
For starters, unless Sirianni wins a Super Bowl, he will never measure up to Doug Pederson, who was fired just three seasons after hoisting the Lombardi Trophy on the steps of the Art Museum.
Pederson had his faults. Stubborn beyond belief, he never learned how, or he was simply afraid to express how difficult it was to operate with Howie Roseman, who acts like he knows football, pulling his strings and basically telling him what to do.
Pederson’s story includes a sculpture of him and Nick Foles collaborating on the Philly Special touchdown play in Super Bowl 52. Anybody else think the woke Eagles will finesse that statue out of Headhouse Plaza at Lincoln Financial Field and
into some dark warehouse?
Then there’s Roseman, who for whatever reason, has the ear of owner Jeffrey Lurie and then some. Roseman has gotten a lot of mileage out of leading the Eagles to their first Lombardi Trophy when, in fact, it was Pederson, Reich, Nick Foles and player personnel director Joe Douglass who did the heavy lifting. All Roseman did was deliver Carson Wentz, who now doesn’t trust him. More on that in a few.
Until Sirianni stands up to general manager Roseman, he will never have a shot at winning anything,
even his own press conferences. Spending the week trying to answer questions about who is going to play the next weekend is a lot easier when you have control over the game-day roster, which has been the responsibility of Roseman.
The 39-year-old Sirianni is the third-youngest Eagles head coach. He might be the perfect guy to relate to an old team that must become dramatically younger. The Eagles have a lot of payroll tied up in offensive linemen Lane Johnson and Brandon Brooks, who are injury prone, as well as the defensive line with Fletcher Cox and Malik
Jackson.
Sirianni must figure out how to let a chunk of those Eagles veterans and the others who lobbied hard for Duce Staley to get the head coaching job know that he has their backs. That will be tough because it’s also a vote against entitlement, the symbol of that being $128 million quarterback Carson Wentz. FYI, Nick. There’s a Termini’s within walking distance of the NovaCare Compound. You can never go wrong with a cannoli package.
Of course, there isn’t going to be a lot of time to bond while Sirianni tries to fix that “fractured beyond repair” relationship between the Eagles and Wentz. Wentz trusts Eagles management slightly more than Pederson, who benched him. If Wentz had the nerve to publicly tell Eagles fans what he thought about them, he’d have to go into witness protection.
And here’s a thought, Eagles management: When you’re not soaking up the sun and expensing the hors d’oeuvres interviewing all of those coaches at the owner’s Palm Beach, Fla. estate, you might want to hire people of color to a coordinator position or two. With Staley iced out and
Jonathan Gannon of the Colts reportedly in the fold as defensive coordinator, the Eagles are just as insensitive as much of the NFL when it comes to minority hiring. In a league where 68 percent of the players are African-American, just one of the six head coaching openings has been filled by a minority, the New York Jets employing Lebanese-American Robert Saleh.
Pederson has been conspicuous by his silence. Sources figuring he’d have another coaching job by now were sorely mistaken. Substituting Nate Sudfeld for rookie Jalen Hurts rather than going for the win in the fourth quarter of what would be Pederson’s last game with the Birds, the regular-season finale, didn’t earn him any sympathy. Nor did the 4-11-1 finish, even if it got the Eagles the sixth, rather than the ninth overall pick in the spring draft.
To recap, Sirianni has to solve a brewing Wentz or Jalen Hurts quarterback controversy, convince the veterans they’re still wanted and do it all in his first-ever shot at being a head coach with a staff that for the most part has at best, bumped into one another like ships passing in the night.
And it has to be done against the Pederson standard; i.e. one year of losing, three straight trips to the playoffs and a Super Bowl title.
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst and unlike Pederson, always, always have a backup plan.