NEW ORLEANS — Nick Sirianni leaned again, stretched his arms throughout the aluminum bench on the Philadelphia Eagles’ sideline and nodded his head forwards and backwards.
The feistiest coach in soccer was … chilling? Ten minutes earlier than kickoff within the Tremendous Bowl?
“I needed the gamers to see me,” he stated later as he made his approach to the Eagles’ locker room following Philadelphia’s 40-22 victory over the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs. “I truly needed them to return sit subsequent to me.”
It was one thing that stayed with the Eagles’ head coach from two years in the past, all of the empty time that follows the sport’s introductions. “A distinct stream,” Sirianni known as it. He was so amped that evening in Arizona again in February 2023, a fuse of pleasure and emotion. Whereas the nationwide anthem performed, tears trickled down his cheeks.
Not this time.
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This time, Sirianni was surprisingly calm. He spent Sunday morning doing “the identical crap I all the time do,” he stated, which meant taking part in along with his youngsters, poring via his recreation administration sheet and spitballing with offensive coordinator Kellen Moore and affiliate head coach Kevin Patullo.
Oh, and he showered twice. The ritual Sirianni began again at Lincoln Monetary Area in Philadelphia got here with him to New Orleans. It helps him calm down.
However there weren’t as many nerves this time; Sirianni was quietly assured within the days that adopted the Eagles’ 55-23 rout of the Commanders within the NFC Championship Recreation. He knew his staff had weathered the storms of the common season and are available out higher for it. He knew they’d be an issue for any opponent, regardless of if that opponent occurred to be the two-time defending champs and hadn’t misplaced a playoff recreation in three years.
Deep down, Sirianni knew the Eagles have been peaking on the proper time.
“It was like, ‘Alright, we’ve been right here, we’d accomplished this,’” Sirianni stated of advancing to a second Tremendous Bowl in 4 seasons. “Let’s go.”
His employees and gamers felt all of it week in New Orleans — an unshakable conviction that they have been the deeper staff, the extra dynamic staff. His message to the group at their resort Saturday evening was easy and steeped within the classes of Philadelphia’s gutting, last-second loss to the Chiefs in Tremendous Bowl LVII.
“Don’t make it larger than it needs to be,” he informed the gamers. “Distractions don’t matter. Simply go play ball.”
Thus, his calm earlier than kickoff. Sirianni didn’t need his gamers burning their power operating round and hyping themselves up solely to have to attend … and wait … and wait.
Then the Eagles unleashed a punishing efficiency, beating the Chiefs so soundly that Philly was up 34-0 earlier than Kansas Metropolis first crossed midfield. The protection pressured Patrick Mahomes into certainly one of his worst outings as a professional. The offense picked aside Steve Spagnuolo’s vaunted unit. The Eagles halted the league’s reigning dynasty and secured the franchise’s second Tremendous Bowl.
And Sirianni — the oft-maligned coach who famously stumbled via his introductory press convention 4 years in the past, has confronted heaps of criticism in Philadelphia the final 24 months and gave the impression to be on the new seat as lately as Week 5 of this season — badly outcoached top-of-the-line schemers in league historical past in Kansas Metropolis’s Andy Reid.
“We simply whupped the sh— outta their ass the entire recreation,” cornerback Isaiah Rodgers stated.
“They coached higher,” Reid stated. “It begins with me. They usually performed higher.”
Sirianni’s employees had a sense all week in New Orleans: The Chiefs would spend a lot power attempting to cease All-Professional operating again Saquon Barkley that Jalen Hurts and the passing recreation would have their probabilities. All they must do is seize them.
“We knew,” Patullo stated. “We knew.”
“We thought we have been gonna win if we didn’t screw it up,” huge receivers coach Aaron Moorehead added. “We have been so assured in our plan. We have been quite a bit calmer than two years in the past, and Nick’s the rationale why.”
They by no means got here near screwing it up. Tremendous Bowl Sunday noticed the Eagles at their greatest, a credit score to the coach who was his ordinary, fiery self the minute the sport started. When Rodgers broke up Mahomes’ first third-down cross, Sirianni began screaming on the prime of his lungs and bouncing up and down on the sideline. When the Eagles have been known as for a questionable false begin that price them 5 yards on a discipline purpose try, he blew a gasket. And when rookie cornerback Cooper DeJean made the play that broke the sport open — a second-quarter pick-six that put the Eagles up 17-0 — Sirianni ran.
And ran.
And ran.
Thirty yards later, he flung off his headset, flexed his chest and screamed.
With the Tremendous Bowl victory, Nick Sirianni has received 70 p.c of his video games as an NFL head coach. (Timothy A. Clary/ AFP by way of Getty Photos)
Little doubt, Sirianni’s limitless power and aggressive hearth have bled into his staff. The Eagles performed offended all through the playoffs. Cocky, even. They ripped off three straight wins to assert the convention crown, then dominated the two-time defending champs on the game’s largest stage. They received the NFC title recreation and Tremendous Bowl by a mixed 40 factors.
“We have been 2-2, and the world doubted us,” Rodgers stated. “That’s one of the best coach within the league proper now.”
That title nonetheless belongs to Reid, however Sirianni has shifted the narrative round him over the previous 5 weeks. Little doubt, the infrastructure in Philadelphia is superb — Sunday was a testomony to the stacked roster basic supervisor Howie Roseman put collectively — and Sirianni’s coordinators, Moore and defensive guru Vic Fangio, are two of one of the best within the league. But it surely’s the top coach’s job to maximise his expertise and get his staff throughout the end line. Sirianni left little question Sunday evening that he was the correct man for the Eagles all alongside.
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He led them via the storms of the previous two years — final season’s collapse, the reported disconnect with Hurts, the retirement of franchise stalwart Jason Kelce, this yr’s uneven begin — and never solely bought them again to the Tremendous Bowl however bought them over the hump.
It wasn’t all that way back that half of Philadelphia needed to run him out of city. The Eagles simply received 16 of their final 17 video games. And now they’re getting ready for a Tremendous Bowl parade.
In 4 years, Sirianni’s by no means had a dropping season. His successful proportion, together with the playoffs, is a staggering 70 p.c, one of the best of any lively head coach. He’s made two Tremendous Bowl appearances and received one.
“You both win otherwise you be taught,” Hurts saved saying after the Tremendous Bowl LVII loss. Sirianni discovered. He saved away the teachings from that evening, and as soon as he made it again, he used them.
When it was over, after he’d been doused in Gatorade, pleaded on stage with Moore to “run this sh— again,” scooped up certainly one of his three sons on the sphere — “You received!” his son gleefully shouted — and hugged his mother and father, Sirianni strolled via the bowels of the Caesars Superdome and towards the victorious locker room.
He didn’t scream. Didn’t gloat. Didn’t even act all that excited.
Had it sunk in but? The truth that he was now a Tremendous Bowl champion?
“Probably not,” he stated, smiling. “However I’ll get there.”
Inside that locker room, Roseman danced. Cigar smoke hung within the air whereas gamers popped champagne bottles and blasted music. Dom DiSandro, the staff’s chief of safety who serves as Sirianni’s right-hand man, walked in with an Italian flag draped over his pullover.
The coach was the final to enter. Somebody handed him a bottle of champagne. Fairly quickly, the Lombardi Trophy was in his arms.
(Jamie Squire / Getty Photos)