Sirianni is now a “CEO head coach” in his fullest sense yet. An offensive play-caller for only the first part of his first season, Sirianni is once again delegating that duty to his coordinator. But he’s taking an even further step back from the controls with Kellen Moore, hired in February.
The arrangement is a response to the 2023 offense’s late-season collapse. It’s a decision Sirianni insists is his own, and its results will carry significant weight over the fate of a coaching regime trying to maximize a star-studded roster.
“At the end of the day, I have to do what’s best for the team and sometimes it is hard, right?” Sirianni said in a June roundtable interview. “And, like, I won’t lie to you, that was hard, but I knew in my gut what was best for the team, and I see a lot of positives from it.”
Here’s the arrangement in Sirianni’s words: “I brought Kellen in. I let him run with the offense. We share some thoughts. And he goes with it.”
How is that any different from Sirianni’s arrangement with his first coordinator, Shane Steichen? Or his last one, Brian Johnson, among the first coaches Sirianni ever fired?
Sirianni says he won’t be as heavily involved with the day-to-day oversight of the offense. He described a 2023 routine in which he was “always in every offensive meeting” and “every game-plan meeting.” He said he became so consumed with the success of his system (he’s often proudly stated the system is his) that he sometimes “abandoned” other phases and players who needed him.
“I didn’t call plays last year, all right?” Sirianni clarified. “But, like, I had to help. I wanted to help with that. It was my expertise of helping — just like it was in ‘21 and just like it was in ‘22. But everything I had to do was I felt like I had to go to the next thing: ‘I got to go to the next thing on offense.
I got to go to the next thing on offense. I got to go to the next thing on offense.’ … I felt like a mistake that I made was that and that’s not what’s best for the team and what’s needed for the team is me to be the head coach, not the offensive coordinator. For multiple reasons.”
The admission reveals an evolution in Sirianni’s method that’s still evolving in Philly only because Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie decided it should. Lurie, who explored hiring Bill Belichick, according to ESPN, lauded Sirianni’s “growth as a young coach” at the NFL’s annual meetings in March. Lurie liked that Sirianni is “extremely self-critical.” But what Sirianni is self-critiquing may be difficult to curb.
If Sirianni was at the very least hyper-fixated with the offense’s problems under Johnson (which in itself suggests micromanagement of a first-time NFL coordinator), how will Sirianni manage Moore if problems persist in 2024, especially with Sirianni’s job on the line?
How a CEO head coach manages his staff is uniquely crucial. It is one of the main criteria for such a role. Any organization that agrees to this structure accepts the risk of schematic volatility. Jalen Hurts, the team’s $255 million franchise quarterback, is already on his fifth play-caller. If Sirianni’s arrangement succeeds and Moore becomes a head coach, Hurts must play for a sixth. Same goes if the arrangement fails.
But it’s notable that Hurts described Moore’s system during offseason workouts as being “probably 95%” new. That’s an extremely high percentage. Sirianni has dodged quantifying any portion of his influence on the new playbook, instead characterizing his working relationship with Moore as a collaboration.
But the high clip of newness at the very least implies that Sirianni isn’t letting obstinance impede Moore from being the catalyst for fresh ideas.
Sirianni admitted the 2023 offense grew stale late in the season. Upon Johnson’s initial promotion, Sirianni said “you’re not going to see a lot of change” with the Eagles offense. And for Sirianni’s eventual lesson on schematic hubris, it was Johnson who paid the price.
Sirianni will receive some credit if the Eagles improve offensively in 2024, even if he’s not as heavily involved in the Xs and Os. He’s responsible for the results of his arrangements.
That still doesn’t guarantee respect or credibility within the team. Sirianni believes coaches build good relationships with players when the players “know you’re going to get them better.” Eagles players would therefore need to view Sirianni’s step back from schematics as a strength. A reporter asked Hurts in June what he noticed about Sirianni being open-minded about the offense and what that said about him.
“That’s a great question,” Hurts replied. “I don’t know if I know the answer to it.”
Known for being tight-lipped and intentionally vague, Hurts may at least be waiting to see how this arrangement turns out. All head coaches earn respect when their teams win. But when teams under CEO head coaches lose, players can’t hold onto the confidence that their coach is still a wizard in the film room. Instead, they must hold confidence in their coach’s control over the entire structure.
Sirianni got his first offensive and defensive coordinator hires right with Steichen and Jonathan Gannon. They’re now both head coaches. Special teams coordinator Michael Clay, hired by Sirianni in 2021, is a mainstay whose unit ranked first in DVOA last season. Dysfunction defined Sirianni’s second round of coordinator hires in Johnson and Sean Desai, whom Sirianni demoted midseason in a switch to Matt Patricia that also failed.
By hiring Moore and Vic Fangio, Sirianni hopes he’s “rectifying” those failures. Fangio’s defensive mind and proficiency for play-calling is partly why Sirianni isn’t concerned about the 65-year-old coach’s bristly, old-school demeanor — which didn’t match well with Miami Dolphins players who’ve since lobbed subtle digs at their former coordinator.
“When (players) know you can get them better, that’s where you truly can build a relationship,” Sirianni said. “Otherwise, you’re just buddies. I don’t want coaches and players being just buddies. I want there to be a real relationship that you’re both making each other better and then we can learn even more about each other and our relationship can grow.”
Sirianni says his scaling down from offensive duties now allows him “to see things from a 30,000-foot view.” He can focus on the team’s game-management decisions and overall culture. He can tend to any position group’s meeting room. He can step out of any room at any time to have a conversation with a player “who needs me at that certain time to be his head coach.”
“You do what’s best for the team because you love the team not because you love your selfish reasons of what you want,” Sirianni said. “And I really feel good about that, and, like I said, I feel good in the direction we’re going, and I think we had a good offseason.”
Sirianni’s fourth season officially begins when the Eagles report to training camp on Tuesday.
His teams have reached the playoffs each season while fielding a 34-17 record, a .667 win percentage that ranks first all-time among Eagles head coaches. Lurie has exercised patience with the head coaches he’s hired since buying the franchise in 1994.
Only Chip Kelly was fired in season, and he was terminated before the final game of his third season. Sirianni understands the stakes.
“It’s Philly. It’s the NFL. At the end of the day, we have to win enough,” Sirianni said. “If we don’t win enough, it’s going to be hard for me to continue to work here, and I get that. I think that goes back to the that you can control and that I can’t control.
I can control our daily process. I can control the message every day of, ‘Hey, this is what’s important,’ and then everybody else has to continue to do that, too. That’s what I can control. I can’t control anything else.”
(Top photo of Nick Sirianni: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
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