As the days have passed following last Sunday’s nightmare-fueled loss to Jacksonville in London, and all angles of Nick Sirianni’s last minute decision to allow the Jaguars an opportunity to return the final kickoff have been dissected to within an inch of its life (including by me), I think it’s fair to say this week’s home game against the Carolina Panthers is a crossroads for the embattled head coach.
Upon further reflection, I can agree that his kickoff decision last week can be argued both ways.
There were sound reasons to kick it through the end zone (still is the right call in my opinion) and to allow a return. There are other aspects of those final moments that deserve scrutiny, specifically whether Jalen Hurts, Makai Lemon, and Sean Mannion executed those final seconds correctly. But in the end, it was virtually impossible for the Jaguars to win a game with eight seconds left, no timeouts and about to receive a kickoff.
In 999 times out of 1000, the Eagles win with no issues and none of those decisions are discussed. Ever.
Perhaps the greater point of emphasis on the job Sirianni did last Sunday should be on the team’s overall performance.
Coming off back-to-back losses and fielding a wildly undermanned roster, Sirianni had his team up for that game in London. They flew across the ocean, knowing they had less talent on the field than their opponent, and should have won a game in which they were massive underdogs. That Sirianni was able to coax that kind of effort out of a pedestrian roster last Sunday is a testament to his ability to get his players to play hard for him.
That’s why Sunday’s game against Carolina is such an important one for him, and the organization.
We’ve seen the head coaching life cycle under Jeffrey Lurie. When things start to go bad, the front office doesn’t let situations linger. They make quick decisions.
Andy Reid was dismissed after a 4-12 season in 2012 that was preceded by an 8-8 season the year before. Doug Pederson was let go after just one losing season, a 4-11-1 campaign during the COVID year of 2020. When Lurie and Howie Roseman feel a coach’s life cycle has come and gone, they act quickly. The 2012 and ‘20 seasons spun wildly out of control on both coaches to the point a change became inevitable.
A win on Sunday stops the bleeding and at least signals this year may not spiral out of control. It’s similar to Week 6 of the 2024 Super Bowl season. Coming off a ‘23 campaign in which the team fell apart and collapsed in spectacular fashion, the Eagles started 2-2 and coming off a humiliating loss to the Bucs in Tampa. There was a very real feeling that if Sirianni didn’t take care of business coming out of that bye week, he might be fired in-season.
It wasn’t pretty, but with a new run-first, no-turnover offensive philosophy and a defense that was finding its legs, the Eagles edged the Browns 20-16 in an ugly home win. But, it was a victory that launched a 10-game winning streak. They would lose just one more time the entire season before winning it all.
That won’t happen this time. There won’t be any 10-game winning streaks, and the likelihood of this team winning a Super Bowl at this moment is exceedingly remote. No one is expecting that right now, but a loss and, more to the point, a lackluster effort at the Linc, could spell doom for the future of Sirianni as head coach of the Eagles. There is no chance anyone is fired in the middle of the season, but how this team plays down the stretch will determine whether Sirianni has a long-term future in Philadelphia.
And make no mistake, Sirianni will attempt on Sunday to do something no NFL team has ever successfully done — win a game in which a team is coming off an international game and has to play a team coming off a bye week.It’s only happened four times before, and teams in the Birds’ position are 0-4. This was the Eagles’ choice, by the way. They could have scheduled their bye week coming back from London, but chose to push it later in the season. Nevertheless, it would be a remarkable thing if Sirianni has this team up and running at full capacity on Sunday afternoon against a team coming off a two-week break.
It’s fair to wonder if Sirianni lost the locker room last Sunday, even if his decision to allow a return was defensible. He has taken full responsibility for last week’s debacle, a noble act. And while that is certainly appreciated by his players, and while his players all want to do well for him, how will they respond to that? Do they see their boss taking ownership of a questionable decision and continue to rally behind him? Or do they see him as a good guy that lacks answers on how to fix a lackluster offense and has had an uneven track record of making in-game decisions?
In short, do the players trust him?
If they do, you will see an Eagles team come out of the locker room on Sunday ready, once again, to play hard. Despite being the home team, it is essentially a pick ‘em game, meaning most oddsmakers believe Carolina is the better team. But it was clear last week that Jacksonville was the better team by a significant margin, and the Birds almost shocked the world by stealing a game in which they were touchdown-underdogs.
Sirianni and the Eagles are paying the price for winning a Super Bowl two seasons ago. Two of their offensive linemen essentially broke themselves doing it, and they’ve never recovered. Their veteran offensive coordinator left to take another job, and they’ve struggled to replace him ever since. Their star wide receiver revealed team goals weren’t as important to him following the Super Bowl and played his way out of town in pursuit of singular glory. And the litany of injuries they’ve suffered, along with the sudden retirement of Lane Johnson, has almost forced the ushering of a new era upon the franchise before they were ready for it.
About the only thing that hasn’t happened is an injury to their star quarterback, which I hope I haven’t now spoken into existence. And let’s not pretend there isn’t uncertainty over whether Jalen Hurts can truly ever be successful in an offense that asks him to play a style of football he never has before and has never appeared comfortable playing.
It’s almost impossible to quickly return to a Super Bowl without a ton of luck on your side, and the Eagles have had none of it this year. That’s OK. That happens. This has been an unbelievable run, and Sirianni has had remarkable injury luck over his first five seasons. But that bill is coming due now.
The Eagles may finish with a record under .500. Coaches can survive that as long as progress can be seen on the field and the product is not embarrassing. Good coaches help less talented teams play over their heads and improve as the season moves along. There are not a ton of healthy Pro Bowlers left on the roster, so every player on the team needs to be coached up even more now. It is imperative this coaching staff, specifically on the offensive side of the ball, gives this team an edge.
The Eagles must play smarter football than the guys lined up against them. They cannot rely on their talent to paper over execution problems and mistakes. They cannot be a heavily-penalized team. They cannot make bad decisions. Virtually every in-game decision has to have the correct process, even if the results don’t go their way.
If they play smart, competent football, Sirianni should keep his job, no matter the record. He’s a CEO head coach, and must be the very best version of that for this project to work. This Sunday begins an opportunity to show he can get the most out of his talent and defy the critics who believe his coordinators and Howie Roseman’s roster have carried him to two Super Bowls. He needs to be a force multiplier, a positive agent for success.
He needs to give the Eagles an edge.
This Sunday against Carolina will give us a pretty good indication how the team feels about its head coach, which will go a long way in determining how the front office should feel about him, too.
