'Awesome!' Eagles' Nick Sirainni Reveals View on Matt Patricia Hire

PHILADELPHIA - The Philadelphia Eagles had to make some significant coaching changes for the first time in the Nick Sirianni era this offseason and when it came to the additions, the most surprising was Matt Patricia, the long-time Bill Belichick assistant and the former head coach of the Detroit Lions.

Rumors first surfaced of Patricia coming on board as the replacement for Nick Rallis as the Eagles' linebackers coach. The end game was larger than that for Patricia, who ultimately got a senior defensive assistant title, an intriguing new layer to the staff that didn’t exist when former coordinators Shane Steichen and Jonathan Gannon were in place.

Now the head coaches in Indianapolis and Arizona, respectively, Steichen was succeeded by Brian Johnson as the offensive coordinator, and Gannon was replaced as defensive coordinator by going outside the organization to tab Sean Desai, who was an assistant head coach in Seattle last season and was the DC in Chicago for the 2021 season.

Sirianni then added a layer with two senior assistants in Marcus Brady for the offense and Patricia for the defense.

Brady, the former OC with the Colts before being fired in-season last year, had already arrived in Philadelphia as a consultant during the run to Super Bowl LVII, while Patricia was busy working with offense in New England, perhaps a weird late-career coaching crisis move by Belichick considering Patricia spent the prior two decades specializing in defense.

Not to Sirianni, however, an offensive-minded CEO coach who spent a portion of Wednesday’s first training camp practice vocally lamenting his defense’s inability to avoid pre-snap penalties in red-zone work.

Patricia is a football coach, who was an offensive assistant with Belichick first in 2004 and 2005 before switching sides.

The other hurdle in Patricia to Philadelphia was convincing star cornerback Darius Slay to accept his former head coach after some one-sided angst born out of perceived disrespect when the two were together in Detroit.

What Patricia thought was motivation was taken in a different direction by Slay, who help a grudge that was evidently worked out before Patricia came on board with the Eagles.

Sirianni went into depth about the hiring for the first time Wednesday.

“He's been an excellent resource for me,” the coach told SI.com’s Eagles Today when discussing Patricia. “You bring guys like that in to do just that, be resources for you, be resources for the defensive coordinator.

"He has a ton of experience.”

Nick Sirianni on Matt Patricia #Eagles pic.twitter.com/3mu2pztXoi
— John McMullen (@JFMcMullen) July 27, 2023

The fact that Patricia has head-coaching experience and can be a larger sounding board also appealed to Sirianni.

“It's nice to have a former head coach on the staff that I'm able to bounce some different things off of,” said Sirianni. “Like I said, awesome, awesome resource.”

The Eagles coach saved the most interesting part of his reasoning for bringing Patricia in for last, however,

“[He] comes from a great coaching tree,” Sirianni said. “[I’ve] always been fascinated by that coaching tree, and how I can pick the brain of that so I can continue to get better as a coach and ultimately us get better as a team.”

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-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