In Super Bowl triumph, Nick Sirianni proves he was right coach for Eagles all along

NEW ORLEANS — Nick Sirianni leaned back, stretched his arms across the aluminum bench on the Philadelphia Eagles’ sideline and nodded his head back and forth.

The feistiest coach in football was … chilling? Ten minutes before kickoff in the Super Bowl?

“I wanted the players to see me,” he said later as he made his way to the Eagles’ locker room following Philadelphia’s 40-22 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs. “I actually wanted them to come sit next to me.”

It was something that stayed with the Eagles’ head coach from two years ago, all the empty time that follows the game’s introductions. “A different flow,” Sirianni called it. He was so amped that night in Arizona back in February 2023, a fuse of excitement and emotion. While the national anthem played, tears trickled down his cheeks.

Not this time.

This time, Sirianni was strangely calm. He spent Sunday morning doing “the same crap I always do,” he said, which meant playing with his kids, poring through his game management sheet and spitballing with offensive coordinator Kellen Moore and associate head coach Kevin Patullo.

Oh, and he showered twice. The ritual Sirianni started back at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia came with him to New Orleans. It helps him relax.

But there weren’t as many nerves this time; Sirianni was quietly confident in the days that followed the Eagles’ 55-23 rout of the Commanders in the NFC Championship Game. He knew his team had weathered the storms of the regular season and come out better for it. He knew they’d be a problem for any opponent, no matter if that opponent happened to be the two-time defending champs and hadn’t lost a playoff game in three years.

Deep down, Sirianni knew the Eagles were peaking at the right time.

“It was like, ‘Alright, we’ve been here, we’d done this,’” Sirianni said of advancing to a second Super Bowl in four seasons. “Let’s go.”

His staff and players felt it all week in New Orleans — an unshakable conviction that they were the deeper team, the more dynamic team. His message to the group at their hotel Saturday night was simple and steeped in the lessons of Philadelphia’s gutting, last-second loss to the Chiefs in Super Bowl LVII.

“Don’t make it bigger than it has to be,” he told the players. “Distractions don’t matter. Just go play ball.”

Thus, his calm before kickoff. Sirianni didn’t want his players burning their energy running around and hyping themselves up only to have to wait … and wait … and wait.

Then the Eagles unleashed a punishing performance, beating the Chiefs so soundly that Philly was up 34-0 before Kansas City first crossed midfield. The defense forced Patrick Mahomes into one of his worst outings as a pro. The offense picked apart Steve Spagnuolo’s vaunted unit. The Eagles halted the league’s reigning dynasty and secured the franchise’s second Super Bowl.

And Sirianni — the oft-maligned coach who famously stumbled through his introductory press conference four years ago, has faced heaps of criticism in Philadelphia the last 24 months and seemed to be on the hot seat as recently as Week 5 of this season — badly outcoached one of the best schemers in league history in Kansas City’s Andy Reid.

“We just whupped the sh— outta their ass the whole game,” cornerback Isaiah Rodgers said.

“They coached better,” Reid said. “It starts with me. And they played better.”

Sirianni’s staff had a feeling all week in New Orleans: The Chiefs would spend so much energy trying to stop All-Pro running back Saquon Barkley that Jalen Hurts and the passing game would have their chances. All they would have to do is seize them.

“We knew,” Patullo said. “We knew.”

“We thought we were gonna win if we didn’t screw it up,” wide receivers coach Aaron Moorehead added. “We were so confident in our plan. We were a lot calmer than two years ago, and Nick’s the reason why.”

They never came close to screwing it up. Super Bowl Sunday saw the Eagles at their best, a credit to the coach who was his usual, fiery self the minute the game began. When Rodgers broke up Mahomes’ first third-down pass, Sirianni started screaming at the top of his lungs and bouncing up and down on the sideline. When the Eagles were called for a questionable false start that cost them five yards on a field goal attempt, he blew a gasket. And when rookie cornerback Cooper DeJean made the play that broke the game 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 Super Bowl victory, Nick Sirianni has won 70 percent of his games as an NFL head coach. (Timothy A. Clary/ AFP via Getty Images)

No doubt, Sirianni’s endless energy and competitive fire have bled into his team. The Eagles played angry throughout the playoffs. Cocky, even. They ripped off three straight wins to claim the conference crown, then dominated the two-time defending champs on the sport’s biggest stage. They won the NFC title game and Super Bowl by a combined 40 points.

“We were 2-2, and the world doubted us,” Rodgers said. “That’s the best coach in the league right now.”

That title still belongs to Reid, but Sirianni has shifted the narrative around him over the past five weeks. No doubt, the infrastructure in Philadelphia is excellent — Sunday was a testament to the stacked roster general manager Howie Roseman put together — and Sirianni’s coordinators, Moore and defensive guru Vic Fangio, are two of the best in the league. But it’s the head coach’s job to maximize his talent and get his team across the finish line. Sirianni left no doubt Sunday night that he was the right man for the Eagles all along.

GO DEEPER

Not everybody loves Nick Sirianni, but all the Eagles coach does is win

He led them through the storms of the past two years — last season’s collapse, the reported disconnect with Hurts, the retirement of franchise stalwart Jason Kelce, this year’s uneven start — and not only got them back to the Super Bowl but got them over the hump.

It wasn’t all that long ago that half of Philadelphia wanted to run him out of town. The Eagles just won 16 of their last 17 games. And now they’re preparing for a Super Bowl parade.

In four years, Sirianni’s never had a losing season. His winning percentage, including the playoffs, is a staggering 70 percent, the best of any active head coach. He’s made two Super Bowl appearances and won one.

“You either win or you learn,” Hurts kept saying after the Super Bowl LVII loss. Sirianni learned. He stored away the lessons from that night, and once he made it back, he used them.

When it was over, after he’d been doused in Gatorade, pleaded on stage with Moore to “run this sh— back,” scooped up one of his three sons on the field — “You won!” his son gleefully shouted — and hugged his parents, Sirianni strolled through the bowels of the Caesars Superdome and toward the victorious locker room.

He didn’t scream. Didn’t gloat. Didn’t even act all that excited.

Had it sunk in yet? The fact that he was now a Super Bowl champion?

“Not really,” he said, smiling. “But I’ll get there.”

Inside that locker room, Roseman danced. Cigar smoke hung in the air while players popped champagne bottles and blasted music. Dom DiSandro, the team’s chief of security who serves as Sirianni’s right-hand man, walked in with an Italian flag draped over his pullover.

The coach was the last to enter. Someone handed him a bottle of champagne. Pretty soon, the Lombardi Trophy was in his hands.

(Jamie Squire / Getty Images)