Philadelphia Eagles’ Transparency Could Be Competitive Edge Nick Sirianni is Looking For
What did you know and when did you know it?
Philadelphia Eagles coach Nick Sirianni’s obsessive mindset toward competitive advantage tilted him toward playing games when it came to the shift from Sean Desai to Matt Patricia as the defensive play-caller and de facto defensive coordinator in the leadup to Monday night's game against the Seattle Seahawks at Lumen Field.
Perhaps Sirianni had not made the decision on Tuesday of last week when he claimed “We’re going to keep rolling and finding answers with the people that we have” when asked about changes with the coaching staff.
If you feel like giving the benefit of the doubt and drinking the organizational Kool-Aid, you might even talk yourself into believing Desai wasn’t set adrift before his own business-as-usual presser on Wednesday.
By Thursday, however, Sirianni crossed out a scheduled walkthrough in favor of a rare late-season padded practice, in hindsight a clear indication that the decision had been made.
Yet, Sirianni went forward with his last scheduled media session on Saturday playing dumb before FOX’s Jay Glazer first reported that the Eagles quietly made a change earlier in the week.
There’s good and bad to this. The former being that Sirianni was not forced to make a move by team owner Jeffrey Lurie or GM Howie Roseman, a card those two have played before with former coach Doug Pederson. The latter is that Sirianni is pushing the envelope when it comes to goodwill, something that may seem inconsequential during the organization’s current run but will quickly escalate when the worm turns in a cyclical industry.
Eagles GM Howie Roseman brought both Sean Desai and Matt Patricia to Nick Sirianni's attention.
USA Today
A few weeks ago before the blowout loss to the San Francisco 49ers, Sirianni played the obfuscation game when it came to Dallas Goedert’s fractured forearm only to scream at reporters walking onto the practice field a short time later with “Sometimes you gotta wait and see who's out, cause I ain't telling you shit.”
Goedert did indeed practice in a limited fashion but didn’t play in the game, a fact that SI.com’s Eagles Today reported a week earlier when a team source confirmed the medical staff placed a hard month’s absence on Goedert to allow the fractured bone to heal properly.
Once that date passed the day after the San Francisco game, Goedert was indeed back for Week 14 at Dallas and Kyle Shanahan nor Niners defensive coordinator Steve Wilks were exactly scrambling or fooled by the added complication of “preparing” for Goedert in what turned into a 42-19 blowout.
That’s neither here nor there, though. Sirianni truly believes in squeezing any advantage he can during a given game week and maybe Desai’s relationship with Pete Carroll was worth holding off the curve ball as long as possible before news finally leaked of the change on Sunday.
Sirianni has every right to believe what he believes but the idea that Patricia can make wholesale changes in three practices so late in the season is ludicrous even if there are slight differences from what Desai, Carroll’s former assistant head coach, might do in certain situations.
More so, common sense says Sirianni’s decision to play games will have little to do with a win or loss against the Seahawks. It does say, the head coach may want to stop chasing inconsequential advantages in exchange for his reputation and the optics his actions have created.
