Judging by the comments beneath a video of Philadelphia Eagles coach Nick Sirianni bringing his kids to the podium after Sunday’s 20–16 win over the Cleveland Browns, I can almost guarantee that the fan he was screaming at toward the end of the game deserved it.
The Eagles’ coach showed up to his first game after the bye week with a shaved head, barely beat one of the worst teams in football, was all at once rambling and combative during his postgame interview and was seen chirping at what looked to be a member of the team’s own fan base. From 30,000 feet, some might call these the ingredients of a spiral. But those who have watched Sirianni grow into a coach who thrived in Philadelphia, became a part of its zeitgeist and, at least momentarily, tenderized the hearts of a place that tends to be highly conditional in its affection, should know what’s really happening. They should appreciate the fact that he’s still comfortable being himself in a city full of people famous for doing exactly the same. It might be the kind of decision that turns this sleeping giant around.
I have respect for Sirianni bringing back his sideline vibrancy and bringing in his family, and you should, too. That’s who he is. Earlier in the game, he was reportedly hollering at the Browns’ defensive backs. This was a man who had to be prevented by his own quarterback from taunting the opponent in the middle of the Super Bowl. A man who yelled “I know what the f--- I’m doing” after sprinting the length of the sideline to celebrate a touchdown amid a playoff romp against the New York Giants. A man who unironically sour-faced Pete Carroll, screamed at Robert Saleh and told the Dallas Cowboys’ sideline to f--- off.
Sirianni is at his best when he is uniquely, frustratingly, begrudgingly himself. When he’s elbowing you in the gut like a seasoned, no-ACL pickup basketball player looking for an edge. When he’s lost in the moment and on the same emotional wavelength as he was during a ninth-grade gym class dodgeball game.
“I was having fun,” Sirianni told reporters when asked about being more animated Sunday. “I was having fun and I kind of got some feedback from the guys of the sense of, ‘We need you back, Nick. We need your energy. We need your focus.’ I got that from a couple players.
“When I’m operating, having fun, I think that that breeds to the rest of the football team. If I want the guys to celebrate and be themselves after big plays, then I should probably do that myself, right?”
When Sirianni’s not himself, he looks the way he did during his first introduction to Eagles fans. An opening press conference full of blunders. Members of the Philly media told me that version of Sirianni was a “train wreck,” and that fans wanted him fired after just five games. They called him nothing more than a high school coach. A distinction that, I’m just guessing, didn’t bother the son and brother of legendary high school coaches.
And here’s the thing: Eagles fans want Sirianni fired whether he acts like himself or hides it away and tries to become corporate enough to stave off the inevitable. It was always going to end this way for him; for Doug Pederson, the man who delivered the city its only Super Bowl win; for Andy Reid and for any sucker who takes a job there and shows even the slightest bit of human vulnerability. So Sirianni is going out his way, possibly generating enough of a spark to take the Eagles on one more ride with him.
Sirianni is also at his best when he’s interwoven with the people who got him here in the first place. Before the Eagles played the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LVII, I remember talking to the coach about growing up in a house completely consumed by the art of coaching and the love of high school football. A few days before the biggest professional moment of his life, he talked about how awesome it was that, because of his dad, he was the kid who got to open the gym whenever he wanted and play pickup games with his friends. He said—and, I’m guessing, will tell anyone who asks—that he could name more players from the Southwestern Trojans than he could in the NFL. He talked about his own kids, the ones who were on the podium Sunday, and how some of their first complete sentences were: “Is Jalen O.K.?” whenever the quarterback would get hurt.
Maybe the vitriol directed his way is coming from the fact that, for some, the act has gotten old. Maybe it’s coming from the fact that Sirianni has become the grounding rod for everyone’s warped expectations of a team that has plenty of star players but is, largely, trying to salvage the remains of an aging core piloted by a quarterback who still seems to be figuring himself out. Maybe it’s just because that’s part of the life cycle; a reflection of our own short attention spans and limited capacity for grace. You win, you’re loved; you lose and you go home.
No coach—I promise you, not a single one—who takes a job in Philadelphia is naive to that fact. But few of them have had the fortitude to attack it so unapologetically. Sirianni is going to go down swinging, or, in his case, pointing a finger at anyone who has something to say and weighing in himself. He’s going to go down surrounded by his people. He’s going to go down the way we all wish we would when it starts looking bleak.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Nick Sirianni Is Being Himself, For Better or Worse.