Year 6 For Nick Sirianni: Visiting Where It All Began For Eagles Coach

JAMESTOWN, N.Y. - Bills jerseys were everywhere. The motif fit. It was the Fourth of July, and red, white, and blue are the team's predominant colors.

Even if it weren't the fourth, there’d be fans wearing their team’s colors. This is western New York, Bills country. Buffalo is about 90 minutes to the north. There was a man at the local festival in Lakewood, a Jamestown suburb - if you can call it that - of about 3,000 people gathered to celebrate the country's 250th birthday wearing a Sixers No. 3 jersey. It didn’t say Iverson on the back, but ‘The Answer.’

There wasn’t an Eagles jersey in sight. That doesn’t mean there isn’t support for the team coached by this town’s favorite native son, Nick Sirianni.

“I’ll be honest, if the Bills and Eagles played in the Super Bowl, I’d have a hard time figuring out who to root for,” said a woman on one of the closed streets to make room for food and merchandise vendors on the Fourth.

A couple turns away from the festival is Southwestern Central High School, the alma mater of Nick and his brothers - all of them born to coach.

Year 6 is about to unfold for Sirianni. There are only three other coaches in Eagles history who can say that – Andy Reid (14 years, 1999-2012), Greasy Neale (10 years, 1941-50), and Dick Vermeil (7 years, 1976-82) - in the 93-year existence of the franchise.

Only Sirianni has won a Super Bowl with the Eagles, though Neale coached the franchise to back-to-back NFL titles in 1948 and 1949.

The high school alma mater of Nick Sirianni | Ed Kracz/Eagles on SI

STARTING LINE

It all started here in Jamestown, a town of about 28,000 people.

The bellhop grabbed my family’s luggage to help us check into our lodging for the night, a beautiful hotel right on Lake Chautauqua with lovely views of the lake and plenty of amenities to make a long holiday weekend stay memorable.

Several family members have gathered here to celebrate the holiday and see my nephew, who is doing a final rotation at the local hospital as he prepares to graduate from med school next May.

I asked the young bellhop if he was a football fan.

“Yeah, I love the Bills,” he said.

"What about the team coached by the guy from this town?" was the follow-up.

Bellhop: “You mean, Sirianni? Yeah, the Eagles are probably my second favorite team. He graduated from Southwestern.”

Me: “How far is that?”

Bellhop: “Like a mile or two.”

SEEKING SIGNS

There’s no sign of Sirianni having gone to school here once upon a time, a member of the Class of 1999, before heading to Division 3 powerhouse Mount Union. There’s no indication that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was born here and lived 12 years in the area before moving with his family – his dad a U.S. Senator – to just outside of New York City.

There are, however, several homages to Lucille Ball – the house she grew up in, the Lucy and Desi museum, and not one, but two statues over at Lucille Ball Memorial Park, along the lake. This was the hometown of the “First Lady of Comedy.”

You have to go inside Southwestern to find team photos of Sirianni from his days as a football and basketball standout.

Southwestern is working on digitalizing some memorabilia, perhaps a digital Hall of Fame for athletics, arts, and academics, but it’s a platform that still has at least a year to go before being up and running, said the school’s athletic director, Kevin Salisbury, who added that there will certainly be plenty of Sirianni items to view when that project comes to fruition.

COACHING TREE

There is one sign. The athletic complex at Southwestern bears the name Fran Sirianni, Nick’s dad. A middle school teacher at Southwestern for 36 years, Fran coached football, basketball, and track for 45 years in the district.

He passed the coaching bug to his sons, - Mike, the oldest, Skip, and Nick, the youngest.

Nick enters Year 6 with the third-most wins (65) by any head coach in their first five years with a franchise. He is only the fourth coach in the Super Bowl era to make the playoffs in each of his first five seasons, and one of only three to deliver four 11-win campaigns over that same span. Plus, there is that Lombardi Trophy in the lobby of the Jefferson Health Training Complex and the Super Bowl LVII loss to Kansas City in a game the Eagles probably should have won.

Since 2003, Mike has been the head football coach at Washington & Jefferson, a Division 3 college south of Pittsburgh, close to the West Virginia border. He is 202-49 with 11 Presidents’ Athletic Conference (PAC) championships.

Skip teaches high school history and, for 12 years, was the head football coach at Southwestern when it won back-to-back state titles in 2008 and 2009. His teams went 101-26 during his time at the helm and, Salisbury believes, he still holds the record for most games won in Western New York history at 38 in a row.

The day the school renamed its sports facility to the Fran Sirianni Athletic Complex, all three boys were there. All were wearing a shirt with Southwestern on it. Except Nick. He wore a T-shirt with the name of his employer at the time, the San Diego Chargers, for whom he was the quarterbacks’ coach.

It was 2015, before the Chargers’ move to Los Angeles. Sirianni was still climbing the coaching ladder, which led to the Indianapolis Colts’ offensive coordinator job for three years, then landing the Eagles’ head coaching gig in 2021.

STATUE TALK

Back in Philly, outside Lincoln Financial Field, is a statue of the only coach and QB to win a Super Bowl in Eagles history – Doug Pederson and Nick Foles. It’s more the famous play – the Philly Special – that the statue commemorates, but what about one for Sirianni?

Perhaps it could be the “dagger” from Super Bowl 59, with Jalen Hurts lofting a perfect pass to DeVonta Smith from 46 yards away to take a 34-0 lead on the Chiefs with 2:40 to play in the third quarter. Sirianni's directive from the sideline, affirming the call to OC and playcaller Kellen Moore: “If we score, it’s over. Just call it.”

Can there be a statue of that?

How about something in his hometown?

“I can tell you this, there’s been no talks of a statue that I’m aware of,” said Salisbury, the AD, laughing when the topic was broached. “I do know Nick recently got into Chautauqua Sports Hall of Fame, so there are some things down located in downtown Jamestown.”

Two years ago, Nick joined his father and his brother Mike in the Chautauqua Sports Hall of Fame. Skip could be headed there, too, at some point.

EAGLES FANDOM

Eagles jerseys in town may be in short supply, but Nick’s parents are always repping their son’s team.

“There’s almost never a time when I see Fran and Amy Sirianni that they’re not wearing Eagles gear,” said Salisbury. “…To have somebody local do what Nick is doing, an NFL coach, and not only doing that but winning a Super Bowl is amazing, and I know that, and I know that working here at the school where Nick was a student and an athlete, we couldn’t be prouder of him. …We look forward to hopefully him winning some more Super Bowls. He is doing a great job in Philly.”

Winning more Super Bowls might mean beating the region’s beloved Bills at some point. It nearly happened in 2024, the season the Eagles won it all. The Eagles upheld their end of the deal, beating the Washington Commanders 55-23 in the NFC title game. In the AFC title game, held in Buffalo, the Bills fell 32-29 to the Chiefs; otherwise, it would’ve been Eagles-Bills.

Leading up to that championship Sunday, Salisbury had a conversation with his wife, Michelle, because there was a chance both teams could win that day and play in Super Bowl 59.

“My wife is a big Bills fan, and I remember saying to her, ‘You understand if this happens, I’m rooting for Nick, and I’m rooting for Philly,’" Salisbury recalled. "She said, ‘No way, you can’t do that.’ It was a no-brainer for me.”

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