Nick Sirianni: The Most Questioned Coach of Success in the NFL? Eagles Analysis

The Emotional Rollercoaster of Eagles and Nick Sirianni Fans

The Philadelphia Eagles’ fans are known for their demanding nature and their difficulty in being satisfied for long. These same fanatics booed their team at halftime of the first game of the 2018 season, barely two quarters after the team won their first Super Bowl. Expectations are high and public judgment for players and coaches who do not meet them can be ruthless. This is not a complaint or a criticism, but a simple reflection of reality. No one should be naive about what awaits them if they step onto the field or run things in Philadelphia. Even under those standards, the emotional rollercoaster directed at head coach Nick Sirianni is fascinating and remarkable. The Eagles have enjoyed almost unprecedented success during Sirianni’s tenure, reaching the playoffs in each of his first four seasons at the helm. He has reached two Super Bowls and won one in that span. Eagles fans seemed to love Sirianni during the 2022 season and then again at the end of the 2024 campaign. However, even midway through last year’s Super Bowl-winning campaign, there were chants of “Fire Nick” in the crowd, and the coach seemingly responded by yelling at his own fans after a victory.

Every team has fans who get annoyed with coaches, of course, and Eagles fans eventually got tired of Andy Reid and ran him out of town.

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But even at the national level, there isn’t the same respect for Sirianni as there is for young coaches like Sean McVay or Kyle Shanahan, even though Sirianni (possibly) has a better resume than either of those coaches, and than any of their other counterparts under 50 in the NFL. Let’s delve in. I’m not here to judge anyone’s feelings towards Sirianni inside or outside of Philadelphia, but there’s something interesting about this situation. Is Sirianni having a historically great start to his career? Why does he attract more skepticism than other successful coaches? Is it justified? And, could the 8-2 Eagles simply put Big Dom in and get double-digit wins every season?

A Hall of Fame Beginning

Simply with a simple examination of Sirianni’s resume, it seems impossible to dispute the idea that he is having the kind of start we associate with legendary coaches. There is no one else in this generation who has had more success so early in their career than Sirianni, 44 years old.

Let’s start with the record. Midway through his fifth year as an NFL head coach, Sirianni has a record of 56-22, which equates to a .718 winning percentage. That’s roughly the equivalent of winning just over 12 games each year in the 17-game era. The only team with a better winning percentage since Sirianni’s arrival in Philadelphia is Reid’s team in Kansas City, which has gone 57-21 in that same period. Reid is a veteran coach with decades of experience, however. Sirianni has been so good from the moment he took over. That kind of success early in his career is not unprecedented, but it’s close. Among coaches with at least 60 games in their first five seasons as an NFL head coach, Sirianni’s .718 winning percentage is the seventh-best in league history through Year 5. The people who precede him are an impressive company: Paul Brown (.887), Chuck Knox (.779), George Seifert (.775), Don Shula (.738), George Allen (.729), and John Madden (.721). That group includes four Hall of Famers, and they are coaches who did most or all of their work before the salary cap adjusted league parity. Right behind Sirianni are Joe Gibbs (.699), Mike Tomlin (.688), Jim Harbaugh (.685), Mike Ditka (.685) and McVay (.680), superstar coaches in more modern times. No one who has started their NFL coaching career after 1990 has begun that career with a better winning percentage through five seasons than Sirianni.

There’s another coach I didn’t mention between Sirianni and those legendary figures in the previous paragraph. Falcons coach Mike Smith might be the only example of the 21st century who got off to such a good start and didn’t get the accolades that the other coaches mentioned above received. Smith was 56-24 (.700) to start his career, but he won only one playoff game in that five-year span. And after going 10-22 in Years 6 and 7, the Falcons fired Smith from what would be his only head coaching job. So, while it’s rare for a head coach with Sirianni’s kind of success to be treated as anything less than a sage, it’s not unprecedented.

However, it’s difficult for me to compare Sirianni to Smith, considering postseason success. We don’t know what he’ll do in the playoffs this season, but Sirianni has reached two Super Bowls in his first four seasons, winning one. He has also reached the postseason in each of his first four years and would become the fifth coach in league history to achieve 5 out of 5 if the Eagles don’t collapse down the stretch (99.6% probability of reaching the postseason, according to ESPN’s Football Power Index). The list of coaches who have reached the playoffs in each of their first four seasons and advanced to two or more Super Bowls is just one person. He is the only coach in the Super Bowl era to achieve that. Brown won titles in the pre-Super Bowl era, while Bill Cowher is the only other coach who has reached the playoffs in each of his first four years and advanced to at least one Super Bowl. (The Steelers fell short against the Cowboys.) Knox, John Harbaugh, and John Robinson reached the playoffs in each of their first four seasons without winning a title in that time period.

At the same time, Sirianni was able to begin his playoff career in Philadelphia by taking advantage of a seventh seed in 2021 that was not available to many other coaches in previous seasons. Even so, if we limit ourselves to coaches who have made three playoff appearances in four years, Sirianni would still be at a very rare level. Through four full years, here are the neighborhoods in which Sirianni resides:

• Three or more playoff appearances, two Super Bowl appearances: Gibbs, Sirianni, and Tomlin
• Three or more playoff appearances, one Super Bowl win: Gibbs, Sirianni, Tomlin, Bill Parcells, Doug Pederson, Seifert, and Barry Switzer

Gibbs and Tomlin each won those two Super Bowls. Seifert and Switzer inherited teams that had won the Super Bowl literally the season before they arrived. Tomlin’s Steelers had won the championship two years before he was named head coach. Pederson is also on this list, which also seems like it should be addressed. Did Sirianni simply inherit a great situation from the previous coach? Well, it depends on how much we’re willing to discount what was a difficult 2020 season. Pederson’s Eagles were good to excellent for most of his time there. The 2016 team went 7-9, but those Eagles were analytics darlings, leading them to be on the list of teams with odds to improve in 2017. They won the Super Bowl and then posted back-to-back 9-7 records in 2018 and 2019, losing in the playoffs without an injured Carson Wentz both times. (Wentz played a quarter of the loss to the Seahawks in the 2019 wild card round.) The 2020 Eagles were a disaster, finishing 4-11-1 in a terrible NFC East. Wentz fell apart, first becoming frustrated with the organization’s decision to use a second-round pick on Jalen Hurts before crumbling behind an injury-riddled offensive line. Veterans like Malik Jackson, DeSean Jackson, and Alshon Jeffery had disappointing years, and by the end of the season, things had become completely toxic. Apparently stuck with the choice between Pederson and Wentz, the organization chose to dispense with both, trading Wentz to the Colts and firing Pederson, three years after their Super Bowl victory. Even that 2020 team, however, was better than it seemed. The Eagles finished a bit below six wins expected by their point differential, and combined with their brutal injury luck, they ended up on the list of teams likely to improve again in 2021. The 2021 version of Football Outsiders Almanac projected the Eagles for 7.3 wins. Philadelphia found something leaning into the quarterback running game with Hurts, who exceeded expectations in his first full year as a starter and went 9-8 against an easy schedule.

It’s probably fair to treat the team Sirianni inherited as something between the perennial playoff visitors of 2017-19 and the disaster factory that was the 2020 edition. He joined a team in the midst of a remodel, if not a complete rebuild, and took it straight back to the postseason as the number 7 seed. Then, the Eagles leveled up again and were one play away from winning Super Bowl LVII. And then, after a frustrating 2023 season (which we’ll get to later), Sirianni’s Eagles had one of the best seasons in the last 25 years, defying the skeptics and stomping the league on their way to a crushing victory in Super Bowl LIX.

There are many people who deserve credit for Philadelphia’s rapid rise to prominence after that 2020 season. Sirianni seems to be one of them. Why doesn’t it always seem to be the case? I can see a few reasons why. Let’s review and see why there’s a disconnect between Sirianni’s resume and the perception of him.

Argument 1: It’s All Howie Roseman!

The common thread between the Pederson and Sirianni eras in Philadelphia, of course, is the general manager. Eagles fans have buried their memories of chanting “Fire Howie” at Phillies games in the spring of 2021, but it is undeniable that Roseman has played a significant role in building Philadelphia’s two Super Bowl winners in the last decade. After being ousted in a power struggle with Chip Kelly before the 2015 offseason, Roseman regained control of personnel and quickly rebuilt an Eagles team that went philosophically sideways during Kelly’s single year as football czar. And although the 2020 season went haywire, Roseman helped right the ship immediately with Sirianni in 2021. The Eagles obtained significant draft capital for Wentz, cleared what had been a clogged salary cap by dispensing with veteran talent, and then hit on their 2021 draft, using their first three selections on DeVonta Smith, Landon Dickerson, and Milton Williams. I wrote extensively about Roseman before the 2024 season, when the 50-year-old solidified his place in Eagles history with one of the best offseasons I can remember. The Eagles got first-team All-Pros on both sides of the ball in Saquon Barkley and Zack Baun, fixed a hole at cornerback by drafting Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean with their first two picks, and hit on their coordinator hires by bringing in Kellen Moore and Vic Fangio. Outside of the signings of Bryce Huff and Devin White, Roseman did as much in one window as any general manager can do to propel a team toward a championship. In that column, however, I explained how Roseman’s perception has changed over time, even though his philosophies haven’t. Moving up a spot or two in the first round is great when it’s for Jalen Carter and less so when the Eagles get Andre Dillard. Moving up and using a Day 2 pick in a trade for a cornerback is brilliant when it’s for DeJean, but not so much when Roseman grabbed Kelee Ringo. Trading a first-round pick for A.J. Brown was a masterstroke; the fact that it came only after the Eagles were left at the altar when they were about to sign the future free agent disaster from the Rams, Allen Robinson, in 2022, doesn’t come up as often.

None of this is to say that Roseman is secretly bad at his job, of course, but rather to serve as a reminder of how much variation there can be from year to year with the decisions that general managers make in terms of personnel. Even really smart and thoughtful front offices make mistakes, sometimes with the most important decisions they will make all offseason. General managers aren’t as good as they seem at their best and aren’t as bad as they seem at their worst.

And when Roseman hired Sirianni, it’s absolutely fair to say that the perception surrounding the long-time general manager was closer to the latter category than the former. The Eagles had just drafted Jalen Reagor ahead of Justin Jefferson in the first round of the 2020 draft. Roseman had been criticized for the decision to use a second-round pick on Hurts while Wentz was still on the roster, a move that apparently had unsettled a star quarterback while landing a player that some people didn’t see as an NFL-caliber passer. Hurts struggled mightily for much of his brief career after taking over for Wentz that season before famously being benched in the final game for Nate Sudfeld. Even a subset of the fanbase thought the real mastermind behind Philadelphia’s success had been Joe Douglas, who had left to become the Jets’ general manager in 2019. (Douglas is now back in Philadelphia as senior personnel director). That 2020 team was in bad shape for other reasons. The Eagles had traded significant draft capital in previous seasons in deals for players like Ronald Darby, Jay Ajayi, Michael Bennett, Golden Tate, and Darius Slay. And while some of those moves paid off during title runs, the Eagles only made five selections in 2018 and 2019. The 2020 class didn’t have much impact and would end up being disappointing outside of Hurts, who alone redeemed picks of players like Reagor and Davion Taylor. And the contracts the Eagles had handed out after the Super Bowl victory to players like Jeffery and Nigel Bradham hadn’t aged well. The hit rate has been much higher since 2021, both in terms of draft selections and free agent signings. Roseman has turned trades with the Colts, Dolphins, and Saints into significant extra draft capital, which has helped mitigate some of the cost of moving up and around on draft day and adding players like Brown and Jaelan Phillips through trades. Roseman obviously deserves credit for the selections and acquisitions the Eagles have made.

But also Sirianni? We know that the draft is an almost impossible exercise, and where players land can have a significant impact on their chances of succeeding at the NFL level. The most important selection Roseman has made in the last five years is Hurts, and after struggling a lot in his rookie season, Hurts made astronomical strides as a passer and became one of the most valuable quarterbacks in the league under his head coach. Perhaps that will happen without Sirianni, but it seems realistic to attribute at least some of the credit for the development of the roster and the success rate of the players that Roseman has brought to the organization to his coach.

Argument 2: Anyone can win with so much talent…

There’s no arguing that the Eagles are loaded. Roseman built one of the most exciting young cores in the league on defense through the draft, which has allowed the organization to build the most expensive offense in NFL history in terms of cash spending during both the 2023 and 2024 seasons. The Eagles have Pro Bowl or better talent in 10 of their 11 starting positions on offense, even if injuries and inconsistency mean that all those guys aren’t always on the field and playing at that level simultaneously. There are also coaches who clearly benefit from being tied to an elite quarterback. Zac Taylor went 40-27 between 2021 and 2024, but I don’t think there would be many people who would attribute that success to Taylor rather than sending most of the credit to Joe Burrow. Mike McCarthy’s win-loss record was more about Aaron Rodgers than any scheme the veteran coach was preparing. Sirianni, on the other hand, has a quarterback that seemingly only Eagles fans believe is an elite quarterback. Hurts consistently wins games, but also routinely finishes outside the top 10 when media members and even league experts rank the top quarterbacks in football. I would say Hurts is underrated, but this isn’t a case where the public perception is that Sirianni has been carried by his QB to a flashy record. Let’s be realistic here. No coach is going to win in the NFL without talent. Ask coach Bill Belichick about what happened once Bill Belichick, the general manager, didn’t hit on his draft picks or find starters at the back end of other teams’ rosters every year. No coach was going to turn Reagor into a better wide receiver than Jefferson or persuade Sudfeld to play well. We can never see what Hurts’ career would have been like after Year 1 with a different coach, or if guys like Carter or DeJean could have become superstars so quickly under the vast majority of other coaches. However, there are many veterans who have left other teams to join the Eagles under Sirianni, and it seems completely fair to acknowledge how many of them improved after joining the Eagles (and/or worsened after leaving the organization). Some notable additions:

• A.J. Brown might be in an endless cycle of frustration at the moment, but the explosive wide receiver saw his receiving yards increase after joining the Eagles, in part because the organization committed to playing him in a higher percentage of offensive plays than the Titans. Brown stayed healthy despite the increased workload.
• Saquon Barkley averaged 3.9 yards per carry in his last season with the Giants and then produced one of the most spectacular seasons we’ve seen from a running back in 2024. A superior offensive line and the same variation of big plays that has hurt Barkley in 2025 obviously played a major role there.
• Zack Baun was playing defensive end for the Saints in 2023 when the Eagles signed him and moved him back to linebacker at Fangio’s insistence. He was First-Team All-Pro in an impressive and wildly impactful debut season with the Eagles and should get consideration for the Pro Bowl again in 2025.
• James Bradberry IV was signed to a one-year contract after no NFL team was willing to trade even a seventh-round pick for his contract in 2022. He quickly produced a Second-Team All-Pro season with the Eagles before declining in 2023.
• Mekhi Becton had missed most of two seasons with knee injuries in New York and struggled in his last season with the Jets. The Eagles signed the 363-pound lineman and moved him to right guard, where he had an excellent season blocking for Barkley. Becton went to the Chargers in free agency, where he has struggled with both inconsistent play and staying on the field for full games.
• C.J. Gardner-Johnson is a two-time Sirianni Award winner. Acquired via trade just before the 2022 season, the combative defensive safety intercepted six passes to help the Eagles reach the Super Bowl. Gardner-Johnson then dealt with an injury-plagued 2023 before returning to the Eagles and starting 16 games on the title-winning team. Traded to the Texans in 2025, Gardner-Johnson was cut after three games, despite Houston being on the hook for $7.3 million. He has now landed with the Bears.
• Haason Reddick joined in free agency after an 11-sack season with the Panthers and made his first two Pro Bowl appearances in his two seasons with the Eagles, accumulating 27 sacks in two years. Traded to the Jets and then landing with the Bucs in free agency, Reddick has 2.5 sacks in 17 games since leaving Philadelphia.

Does every free agent addition work? Of course not. Don’t ask Eagles fans about Huff or Nicholas Morrow. Does every player who leaves struggle immediately? No. Josh Sweat and Milton Williams are having great years away from Philadelphia.