How Nick Sirianni Rebuilt The Eagles Culture This Season
Very few people outside of the Eagles building had confidence in Nick Sirianni coming into this season. But apparently everyone in the building was behind him. What makes his players so loyal to him? Tim McManus wrote a fantastic piece about that, and you can read the full thing here. But he also joined The Best Show Ever this week, and you can see what he had to say below.
On The Connection Nick Sirianni Has With His Players
“One area of focus and one thing that he’s been pretty good at over the course of his time here has been connecting with players.
There’s a little bit of a difference between some public perception versus the way that the locker room feels about them. And so I kind of wanted to figure that out as to why they grabbed his back as much as they did. A lot of it just really comes down to sort of personal connection, whether it’s with Jordan Mailata and his father, who was going through some serious health issues. Sirianni really took the time to make sure that Mailata had a safe space to open up about that.
There’s just so many different stories. Everybody seemed to have their own. You know, I just basically went through the locker room and was like what’s your story with Nick? And people would open up about these personal connections that they had with him.
So I don’t think there’s any question that he’s he’s thriving in that area of his job. And that’s led to further connection between player and coach and in player to player, which is help cultivate what seems like a pretty good culture this year.“
Even last year, with everything that went on, players came out defending him. Jason Kelce and Fletcher Cox both sang his praises on the way out. In hindsight, we should have put more stock in that.
His players love him, and Tim McManus’s article and comments here make it clear why. He takes the time to care about his players. Think Ted Lasso. He might seem like a fool from the outside, and maybe he is not an expert in tactics, but in terms of being a leader of men, he is fantastic. His players will follow him into the fire. That is more important than calling plays.
On How Nick Sirianni Reset The Eagles Culture
“One of the takeaways from last year was that the culture wasn’t up to standard. For them, it was really good in 2022. Last year it fell off. Just a tense building. Even after wins players and coaches alike will tell you that it didn’t have that same connectivity that they had felt a year ago.
So that part of the mission from the organization as a whole and Sirianni in particular. To make sure that that was at a better level. So they’ve invested a whole lot of time into that. It’s something that’s kind of hard to measure when you’re talking about statistics and things that happen on the field.
But they put a ton of energy into that. He focused more time on an area that he thought was lacking and that was the connectivity. Obviously he’s done a pretty good job with it.”
We joked in the off-season about what Sirianni’s job even was now that he was a “CEO Head Coach.” Well, now we know. His job is to manage the culture of the team, and he is evidently very good at it. Taking away the offensive game-planning portion made him even better at it because now he could devote all of his energy to it.
There is much more in Tim McManus’s article. Make sure you read it. The main takeaway though is that Nick Sirianni deserves a lot more credit than we give him. Bill Colarulo was right all along.
You can watch the full interview with Tim McManus below:
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7 Postive Numbers From The Eagles Big Win Over The Packers
15
This is not a stat from this game, but rather one from a previous Eagles playoff game. Back in 2018, the Eagles played the Falcons in their first game of the playoffs. They scored just 15 points. There was similar panic that Nick Foles and the Eagles offense were not going to be able to put up the big numbers they would need to keep winning.
They scored 79 points in the next 2 games. Turns out you can have 1 bad game, and then bounce back from it. And this game was no where near as tense or as bad for the offense as that one was. It is just a reminder that you can bounce back from 1 off game. And in this off game they scored 22, and could have scored more had Saquon not taken a knee and scored that final TD.
