Eagles Hire Nick Sirianni as Head Coach
Nick Sirianni arrived on the Eagles’ coaching scene late but must’ve made quite an impression on the team’s search party because he became he is their next head coach on Thursday.
A source confirmed the hiring, though the Eagles have yet to make it official.
The Indianapolis Colts offensive coordinator for the last three years, Sirianni was the ninth candidate to interview for the position that opened up when the Eagles fired Doug Pederson on Jan. 11. He met with owner Jeffrey Lurie, team president Don Smolenski and general manager Howie Roseman on Tuesday, an interview that wasn’t concluded until the next day.
In baseball parlance, Sirianni, who will turn 40 in June, must’ve hit the proverbial home run in the interview process, so far outta here that it knocked out the reported frontrunner, Josh McDaniels, and Duce Staley, who was perceived as the team’s safety net.
Sirianni certainly knocked it out of the park with Colts head coach Frank Reich.
“We worked together for three years in San Diego,” said Reich about Sirianni during last year’s NFL Scouting Combine. “It didn’t take me long during that tenure there that if I ever had this opportunity (to be a head coach) he would be the guy that I would want to be my coordinator.
“He’s extremely intelligent, he’s very energetic, very passionate about ball, he’s a great teacher, he’s systematic in his thinking, and just the way we see the passing game and the way we think about football are very similar.”
The Eagles initially showed interest in Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley and would have likely hired him had Riley had any interest in leaving Norman.
Other coaches the Eagles had known interviews with, in addition to McDaniels and Staley, were Joe Brady, Robert Saleh, Arthur Smith, Jerod Mayo, Todd Bowles, Kellen Moore, and Dennis Allen.
Sirianni is the 24th head coach in franchise history and the fifth head coaching hire for Lurie after he bought the team in 1994. It's a list that includes two who were one-game interims - Pat Shurmur, who took over for the final game after Chip Kelly was fired, and Fred Bruney, who coached the final game of 1985 after Marion Campbell was fired.
The Eagles are hoping that Sirianni has the same kind of staying power Andy Reid did when they hired the unheralded quarterback coach from Green Bay in 1999 and who ended up sticking around for 14 years.
At the very least, they hope he can last as long as Pederson did, which was five years, and have the same Super Bowl-winning success.
Sirianni didn’t call plays under Colts head coach Frank Reich, but his work with three different quarterbacks in his time in Indy must have been attractive to the Eagles considering their muddle quarterback situation with Carson Wentz and Jalen Hurts.
Sirianni had three different QBs in Indy, starting with Andrew Luck, who surprisingly retired after the 2018 season. Backup Jacoby Brissett was used for 2019 and this year it was Philip Rivers.
The Colts offense never seemed to skip a beat despite the turnover, finishing 10th, ninth, and 12th, respectively, in total offense over those three seasons.
Sirianni was an offensive quality control coach in San Diego with the Chargers when rookie Keenan Allen arrived as a third-round draft pick in 2013 and ended up making 71 catches for 1,046 yards and eight touchdowns that year.
After winning a Division III national title with Mount Union in the 199s, Sirianni got his coaching start as a defensive backs coach with his alma mater. He then spent three years coaching in the highly competitive Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference with Indiana University of Pennsylvania then made the big jump to the NFL as an offensive quality control coach with the Kansas City Chiefs.
He spent four years in KC with various titles that included assistant QB coach and WR coach.
Sirianni, who is from Jamestown, N.Y., moved on to the Chargers, with whom he spent five years, two of which were spent as WR coach and another two as QB coach.
Reich brought him on board after Reich was hired just days after helping the Eagles win a Super Bowl in February of 2018.
Ed Kracz is the publisher of EagleMaven. Check out anything you may have missed pertaining to the Eagles by going to www.SI.com/NFL/Eagles and please follow him on Twitter: @kracze.
