NEW ORLEANS — Nick Sirianni leaned again, stretched his arms throughout the aluminum bench on the Philadelphia Eagles’ sideline and nodded his head backwards and forwards.
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 option to the Eagles’ locker room following Philadelphia’s 40-22 victory over the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs. “I truly needed them to come back 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 unique circulate,” Sirianni referred to as it. He was so amped that night time 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 at all times do,” he stated, which meant taking part in together with his youngsters, poring by means of his sport 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 Discipline in Philadelphia got here with him to New Orleans. It helps him loosen up.
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 crew 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, irrespective of if that opponent occurred to be the two-time defending champs and hadn’t misplaced a playoff sport 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 workers and gamers felt all of it week in New Orleans — an unshakable conviction that they have been the deeper crew, the extra dynamic crew. His message to the group at their resort Saturday night time 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 working 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 one in all 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 by means of 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 recent seat as just lately as Week 5 of this season — badly outcoached the most effective schemers in league historical past in Kansas Metropolis’s Andy Reid.
“We simply whupped the sh— outta their ass the entire sport,” cornerback Isaiah Rodgers stated.
“They coached higher,” Reid stated. “It begins with me. And so they performed higher.”
Sirianni’s workers had a sense all week in New Orleans: The Chiefs would spend a lot power making an attempt to cease All-Professional working again Saquon Barkley that Jalen Hurts and the passing sport 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,” extensive receivers coach Aaron Moorehead added. “We have been so assured in our plan. We have been so much 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 finest, a credit score to the coach who was his standard, fiery self the minute the sport started. When Rodgers broke up Mahomes’ first third-down go, Sirianni began screaming on the high of his lungs and bouncing up and down on the sideline. When the Eagles have been referred to as for a questionable false begin that value them 5 yards on a subject aim 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 gained 70 p.c of his video games as an NFL head coach. (Timothy A. Clary/ AFP through Getty Photographs)
Little doubt, Sirianni’s limitless power and aggressive hearth have bled into his crew. 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 gained the NFC title sport and Tremendous Bowl by a mixed 40 factors.
“We have been 2-2, and the world doubted us,” Rodgers stated. “That’s the most effective 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 common supervisor Howie Roseman put collectively — and Sirianni’s coordinators, Moore and defensive guru Vic Fangio, are two of the most effective within the league. But it surely’s the pinnacle coach’s job to maximise his expertise and get his crew throughout the end line. Sirianni left little question Sunday night time that he was the best man for the Eagles all alongside.
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He led them by means of the storms of the previous two years — final season’s collapse, the reported disconnect with Hurts, the retirement of franchise stalwart Jason Kelce, this 12 months’s uneven begin — and never solely received them again to the Tremendous Bowl however received 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 gained 16 of their final 17 video games. And now they’re making ready for a Tremendous Bowl parade.
In 4 years, Sirianni’s by no means had a shedding season. His profitable share, together with the playoffs, is a staggering 70 p.c, the most effective of any lively head coach. He’s made two Tremendous Bowl appearances and gained one.
“You both win otherwise you study,” Hurts stored saying after the Tremendous Bowl LVII loss. Sirianni discovered. He saved away the teachings from that night time, 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 one in all his three sons on the sphere — “You gained!” his son gleefully shouted — and hugged his dad and mom, Sirianni strolled by means of 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 crew’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 Photographs)