It’s not play calling. It’s not installing a scheme. It’s not running a practice.
Nick Sirianni’s biggest strength is his ability to navigate his team through the adversity that every NFL team inevitably faces. And come out even stronger on the other side.
It's one of the big reasons the Eagles have averaged 12 wins in Sirianni’s four seasons here, reached two Super Bowls in the last three years and won a championship three months ago. And one of the reasons Sirianni has a shiny new long-term contract.
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SIGN UP HERE “You have to be able to embrace adversity,” Sirianni said Tuesday.
And he’s done that every year since he’s been here.
“Everybody that is striving to reach the top of the mountain or whatever it is, like we try to do every single year, adversity is going to be there regardless,” Sirianni said.
“And I really look at any adversity that I've ever been through in my life, whether it was my leg injury in 2001 (as a college football player), whether it's my dad going through cancer, whether it was the collapse of our season, us kind of falling apart at the end of the 2023 season and finishing 1-6.
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“Every one of those things, whether it's scrutiny from your first press conference, I can look at the good in all those things and find good in all those things and how it's shaped me to be who I am today and has made me better as a result of it."
Like Sirianni alluded to, there’s been no shortage of adversity along the way to this lucrative new contract.
Fans and some in the media blasted Sirianni mercilessly and unfairly for his first press conference when he was introduced as head coach in January 2021. And then there was the 3-6 start to his first season. And becoming only the second team to blow a double-digit halftime lead in a Super Bowl a year later. And then that unprecedented collapse and blowout playoff loss in Tampa at the end of 2023 that many believed would cost him his job. And a disappointing 2-2 start last year and the fallout from his shouting match with fans after a win over the Browns.
But Sirianni is constantly preaching to his team that it’s not adversity that will define them. It's how they respond to it.
And he lives it.
Just look at his track record.
The Eagles followed that 3-6 start in 2021 by winning five of their next six games to clinch a playoff berth in Sirianni’s first season. They bounced back from blowing that Super Bowl lead to open the 2022 season 10-1. They responded to that 2023 collapse by winning a Super Bowl a year later. And Sirianni responded to his own sometimes overzealous behavior by calming down and acting more professionally the rest of last year.
“You never want to go through those things as you go through them but, man, if you allow it to shape you, it really does,” he said. “It can shape you to be better and to be who you are at this moment. So, I would say for all the things that I've been through, whether it's on this job or whether it's in my life, I've been able to get better from all those things and I'm grateful, as crazy as that sounds.
“As bad as it is when you go through those things, I can look back at it and be grateful and you hope that the next adversities you go through you remember, ‘Hey you're going to be grateful from this one as well.”
Some people might use things like a Super Bowl championship and a new contract as a chance to gloat, a chance to say, “Look at me now,” to all those who questioned him and doubted him after the introductory presser or the 3-6 start or the 2023 collapse.
Sirianni said that’s not him.
“I don't think like that,” he said. “I'm grateful for the scrutiny. I'm grateful for that for multiple reasons. I'm grateful in the sense that it shapes you to who you are.”