The Most Positive Early Sign for Nick Sirianni

Working with three different QBS the past three years and having success with each, is a big plus for the Eagles' new head coach

PHILADELPHIA - We don't know a ton about Nick Sirianni just yet other than he likes to play the hits.

A shaky introductory press conference for the Eagles’ rookie head coach was followed Monday by Sirianni's first appearance on the organization’s flagship radio station where some of the kinks were ironed out, things like "competition is a core value," and "getting a Ph.D. in leadership" from Frank (Reich).

Now, Sirianni did it backward. You work things out at The Stone Pony before you play Madison Square Garden.

That said, you already kinda know you're getting the same show with Sirianni and there aren’t going to be any Dan Campbell-like "eating kneecaps" outliers.

As expected, Sirianni, 39, fits into the template of most modern coaches, say as little as possible when the microphone is hot.

So, if you want to learn something, it's a good idea to look at his history. After all, the past is almost always a prologue to the future.

And one of the most positive aspects of Sirianni's stint as Reich's offensive coordinator in Indianapolis was the musical chairs at quarterback, especially when you consider the uncertainty of the game's most important position in Philadelphia right now.

Sirianni has been vague about Carson Wentz vs. Jalen Hurts to date because he's a lot like the rest of you and has no idea if the organization will work things out with Wentz.

The coach does know Hurts will be here and the evaluation of both is ongoing with the smart money still on one more opportunity for Wentz to live up to the billing as the No. 2 overall pick in 2016, at least if Wentz agrees to not kill Sirianni's plays out of spite.

Rewind to the 2018 season when Reich reunited with Sirianni from their Chargers days and the two were likely giddy, dreaming about building an offense around Andrew Luck, a true, elite QB1 from a traits standpoint.

There was some concern about health because Luck had to sit out the 2017 campaign after shoulder surgery and was still a work in progress from a rehab standpoint.

Once Luck was close to normal from an arm-strength perspective, things took off quickly and the Colts won 10 games with Luck completing over 67 percent of his passes for 4,593 yards and 39 touchdowns.

With Luck in tow, the Colts were seemingly set as contenders for years when he dropped a bomb late in the 2019 preseason.

At 29, the former Stanford star with eclectic interests was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. After seven seasons, Luck tapped out on the constant cycle of rehab to get his body prepared and simply walked away from the game.

Reich and Sirianni had two weeks to get Jacoby Brissett up to speed as a starting QB.

A former third-round pick by New England, Brissett didn't have Luck's generational skill set but there was plenty to work with and the Colts finished a 7-9 season, more than respectably, especially considering the circumstances, with Brissett throwing for 2,942 yards, 18 touchdowns, and compiling an 88.0 passer rating.

The goal, however, was to get better, and to do that the Colts brought in an old friend of Reich and Sirianni from the Chargers days in Philip Rivers, who finished up his brilliant career in 2020 by leading Indy back to the postseason with a 68.0 percent completion rate, 4,169 yards and 24 touchdowns, all at the age of 39.

In three years, Sirianni bounced from prototype to dual-threat to aging, traditional pocket passer and more than made due.

"The offensive philosophy, again, we're going to be multiple," said Sirianni. "We can attack multiple ways. I'll just use the example here from Indianapolis. We had Andrew Luck as our quarterback. That followed up with Jacoby Brissett as our quarterback then Philip Rivers as our quarterback. Those three teams looked different.

"They were all different in their own ways of how we attacked defenses and how we played the game."

That kind of thinking is a big positive in a league where too many coaches are so married to their schemes that they pound the square peg into the round hole.

As an example, one veteran Super Bowl-winning QB had an opportunity to start again late in his career and told me a scary story.

A cerebral type, the signal-caller was rejuvenated and went into his first meeting with a rookie head coach with notebooks of stuff he was comfortable running and had enough success with to win the Lombardi.

The coach looked at the QB and said: "When you're a coach you can run what you want to run."

Sirianni isn't mired in that kind of ego, instead focusing on the common sense part of teaching: accentuate the strengths and mask the deficiencies.

"I think that's the sign of a good coach, that you're going to change based off of your personnel, right?" Sirianni asked rhetorically. "We have certain personnel in place. We're going to figure out what they can do well and what their strengths are, and we're going to play to their strengths and we are going to try to keep them out of situations that they don't excel well at."

If you looking for an early positive sign in the Sirianni era, look no further.

"It's an ever-changing offensive philosophy," he said. "Sure, we have our core plays in place that we want to do, that we want to be good at because that's what we do, but a lot of it is going to depend on our personnel and utilizing our personnel to their strengths and their weaknesses."

John McMullen contributes Eagles coverage for SI.com's EagleMaven and is the NFL Insider for JAKIB Media. You can listen to John every Tuesday and Thursday on "The Middle" with Eytan Shander, Harry Mayes, and Barrett Brooks on SportsMap Radio and PhillyVoice.com. He’s also the host of Extending the Play on AM1490 in South Jersey. You can reach him at jmcmullen44@gmail.com or on Twitter @JFMcMullen

Ed Kracz is the publisher of EagleMaven. Check out the latest Eagles news at www.SI.com/NFL/Eagles and please follow him on Twitter: @kracze.