How Eagles coach Nick Sirianni turned a difficult week into a dominating win originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia
It was quite a week for Nick Sirianni, from his post-game antics at the Linc to his defiant press conference surrounded by his kids a few minutes later to his apology on Monday to preparing for a must-win road game during the week to celebrating the Eagles’ most lopsided win in two years.
The last thing this team needed was a distraction created by its head coach coming off a lackluster win over the Browns, but Sirianni and his players navigated what could have been a difficult situation, and the team responded with a 28-3 win over the Giants at MetLife.
“I think what I said to our team is obviously you try not to listen, but you do media (four) times a week,” Sirianni said after the Eagles improved to 4-2.
“I just told the team that … there was a bunch of different ways that I learned this week. It wasn’t just through the situation that I was in. I’m not even going to go into all that, but it’s like, you can be angry, but all anger does is cloud your ability to get better and control the things that you need to control.
“So what I said to the team is I put my head down. When you have criticism when you have those different things, you put your head down and you work even harder. The thing about that is the hard work that the team had and that we had throughout the week helped put us in position to be successful today.
“The other thing it does, to be quite honest with you, is it unites. You can look at it as a positive if you allow yourself to do that. I think that this game is constantly teaching us things, and that’s what it taught me this week.”
Say what you will about Sirianni, you can’t argue with 38-19 and a .667 career winning percentage that’s 14th-highest in NFL history (he moved ahead of 1950s Giants coach Jim Lee Howell Sunday).
He was in full damage control mode early in the week, but a 28-3 road win over anybody is impressive and shows that Sirianni still commands the locker room as much as ever.
“Obviously, he knows that I’m behind him and he knows that communication is important (in a) team sport and he’s been doing a really good job of doing that,” Jalen Hurts said after his second straight turnover-free game. “We talk about everybody dominating their box and trying to check off their box given the roles that you have and I feel like he’s really come in with really good intensity, intentionality, and trying to deliver good messages for us to be focused and be on the same page.
“And he’s also apologetic when he needs to be. And so I’m excited about the direction we’re going in and I’m excited about the direction coach is going in with everything, too.”
It was a difficult week for Sirianni and if you don’t believe it you weren’t paying attention when every national football show or web site had headlines like “Sirianni’s a clown.”
But once the practice week rolled around on Wednesday, the team was focused and hungry and determined.
“This was our best week of practice so far this year,” Sirianni said. “We know it takes what it takes. I love when Jalen says that … because it’s true. There’s a price to pay to win. I think that they all saw that. They practiced their butts off. I took care of them a little bit later in the week because of the energy and effort that they had in practice. …
“I could just feel again everything uniting us this week and the work that we put in this week. I had a good feeling we were going to play good because we practiced so good.”
And despite a challenging couple months – last-minute loss vs. the Falcons in the home opener, blowout loss in Tampa, Sirianni’s post-game antics after the Browns game – the Eagles find themselves 4-2. Only the Lions, Vikings and Chiefs have fewer losses.
How did Sirianni move on?
“Shoot, just going to work,” he said. “I love this team. You go through things. We’ve been through a lot of ups. We’ve been through a lot of downs. Control what you can control and rip it to the next one.”
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