Respect a Two-Way Street for Nick Sirianni and Andy Reid
The upcoming Super Bowl LVII matchup between the Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs is filled to the brim with storylines.
Perhaps the most obvious one is the winningest coach in Philadelphia history, Andy Reid, attempting to become the frontrunner in Chiefs' lore by beating his former team on the biggest stage.
Kansas City, though, has also meant a lot to the current Eagles coach, Nick Sirianni, both personally and professionally.
That city is where Sirianni got his first professional coaching job with the help of Todd Haley and it’s also where he met his wife.
“Obviously meeting my wife there, that will always be a special place to us because of that,” Sirianni said on Tuesday afternoon, 48 hours after trouncing the 49ers, 31-7, in the NFC title game.
“Then professionally, my first stint in the NFL. Obviously, it was really important both ways. Kansas City is a great town. We really enjoyed our time there."
Loyalties often change quickly in nomadic professions.
“My wife had a lot of friends there," said the Eagles coach. "I made some good friends there, as well, none of which I would assume are rooting for us or our family this weekend, but that's okay.
"When you have something as significant as meeting your wife there in that city, that place, that time frame, that city is always going to carry a special place in my heart because of that.”
So the ties of Philadelphia to the Show Me State don’t just run one way with Reid.
More so, the KC coach and Sirianni were like ships passing in the night back in 2013 when Reid was about to start a second impressive run as a head coach that has secured his status as a future Hall of Fame coach.
The outgoing staff when Reid was hired by the Chiefs included Sirianni, who had already started to develop a reputation as an up-and-comer after rising from a quality control coach in 2009 all the way to running his own receivers room by 2012.
Reid, as entrenched as they come after 14 mostly successful years with the Eagles, already had his own guy to coach the wideouts and it was an impressive one in David Culley, who would also get tagged as Reid’s first assistant head coach with the Chiefs and ultimately went on to become a head coach in Houston back in 2020.
“When I came here, I was told Nick Sirianni — this guy is really a special coach, really, a good football coach,” Reid said. “But I had David. David was my assistant head coach and he’d been with me for 14 years and so he was coming with me. And I had to make that determination to keep Nick or not.
"And I knew being as good as he was and the reputation he had, I knew he was going to get something. And so, it’s worked out great for him.”
It wasn’t a happy moment for Sirianni to lose a job but he remembers coming out of the ordeal with respect for Reid.
“It was kind of more so just kind of receiving my fate there,” Sirianni said of the meeting. “He had (Culley). … I really admired that he pulled me into the office and asked to meet with me and told me face-to-face that he had a guy, but had heard good things about me, and I appreciated that, his honesty, his ability to get to me as soon as he possibly could so I could move on and find another job.”
Sirianni had built up enough of a reputation in the industry during his four years in Kansas City, that he latched on with a division rival of the Chiefs, the then-San Diego Chargers.
He did have to take a step back to QC control again under Mike McCoy but once Sirianni got in the building, he quickly impressed and was the quarterback coach for Philip Rivers by his second year with the Chargers.
From there, Sirianni was off and running and the relationship he built with Frank Reich in San Diego paid dividends when Reich got the big chair in Indianapolis after winning Super Bowl LII with the Eagles as Doug Pederson’s offensive coordinator.
Reich named Sirianni his OC and let the young coach run his offensive meetings.
Three years later, Sirianni took time out of a family vacation to wow Jeffrey Lurie in Palm Beach and became the Eagles' head coach in January of 2021.
Unlike most first-time head coaches, Sirianni had the luxury of coming into a situation with good offensive and defensive lines, the foundation Reid espoused in 1999 when he cobbled together the template for a successful organization on the football side.
In two years at the helm of the Eagles, Sirianni has already produced two playoff berths, an NFC Championship and a team that was 16-1 with Jalen Hurts as the controls, good enough to be favorited over the more playoff-tested Chiefs.
“I didn't get a chance to pick his brain at all on anything like that but got a ton of respect for Coach Reid and who he is as a person and who he is as a coach,” said Sirianni. “His record speaks for itself, but you talk to anybody, and they think even higher of him as a person.
“Do I know him all that well? No. But I have a high amount of respect for him.”
-John McMullen contributes Eagles coverage for SI.com's Eagles Today and is the NFL Insider for JAKIB Media. You can listen to John, alongside legendary sports-talk host Jody McDonald every morning from 8-10 on ‘Birds 365,” streaming live on YouTube. John is also the host of his own show "Football 24/7 and a daily contributor to ESPN South Jersey. You can reach him at jmcmullen44@gmail.com or on Twitter @JFMcMullen
