Eagles' Nick Sirianni Offers Up Verbal Recommendation For Top Assistant

PHILADELPHIA - The Eagles have bigger fish to fry than most in the NFL this weekend when the Green Bay Packers arrive for their wild-card matchup on Sunday at Lincoln Financial Field.

It’s the offseason for the have-nots in the NFL who were not good enough to make the postseason. And for those looking for new head coaches, it’s interview season.

Eagles offensive coordinator Kellen Moore has gotten two interview requests from New Orleans and Jacksonville and can start to meet virtually three days after Sunday’s game against the 11-6 Packers.

Believe it or not, that’s where you want to be from an organizational standpoint.

"Our goal is to win with consistency and constantly compete for championships,” Eagles GM Howie Roseman has said. “When that happens you lose good people."

For head coaches, sprouting a tree is both a sign of success and pride, as well as a natural disappointment for losing good assistants.

In four years, Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni has already helped develop two head coaches, Arizona’s Jonathan Gannon and Indianapolis’ Shane Steichen.

Sirianni is cognizant of helping his top lieutenants as much as possible, self-aware of his own ambition as an assistant striving for the big chair.

On Friday, Sirianni took time out to hand out a verbal recommendation for his OC.

“I think Kellen is very detailed in everything that he does. Very smart,” Sirianni said when asked what would make Moore a good head coach. “Played at a very high level and done this at a very high level, so can relate to the players in that aspect.

“[He] Puts the guys in good positions to succeed. Can lead men. Is a good leader of men. … As I get to sit here and watch him install the offense, you know, just you can see that and you can say, ‘Man, he'd be great in front of the team.’ He's in front of the offense right now but man, he'd be great in front of the entire team, inspiring the team, getting his message across to the team, coaching football to the team. Coaching the ins and outs of football.”

The closing argument morphed from Xs and Os to the more important aspect of a job Sirianni now knows extremely well.

“[I] just can't say enough good things about what he's done here as our coordinator, how much I think of him as a play-caller and offensive coordinator,” said Sirianni. “I think of him very highly as a person. A great man of character and everything he stands for. I think he would be a great head coach.”

Sirianni then joked that he should temper the praise to throw those at the gate off the scent.

For Moore, though, it’s about when not if and the deeper the Eagles go the more likely the OC will be filing a change of address form.

“I have no doubt in my mind [Moore] will be a great head coach,” Sirianni said.

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