A Mystery I Cannot Solve
December 16, 2024
When you’re my age (73) and have covered sports for over half a century, you hate when something happens that you cannot explain. By now, you figure, you’ve pretty much seen everything.
But the Eagles this season are a puzzle with no solution, at least to me. They have talent, a dazzling combination of youth and experience. They have excellent game-planning by a veteran staff of assistant coaches. They even have some luck mixed in, like that botched pitch by the Steelers that sealed the Eagles 27-13 victory on Sunday.
You don’t set a franchise record for wins (10) without most elements of football working in your favor. You have to be good – maybe even great – to win 12 of 14 games, including impressive victories over the Ravens and Steelers this month alone.
So what’s the mystery?
Nick Sirianni, of course. I cannot explain the success of the head coach (46-19) any better than I could break down the theory of relativity or the ingredients in a fruitcake.
Sirianni doesn’t act like one of the most successful young coaches in NFL history, and he definitely inspires little or no faith in what he’s doing or how he’s doing it.
The latest examples come in the one area of coaching that he reputedly excels at – the culture of his team. Since he no longer has authority over the defense or offense, and since most of his strategic decisions are predetermined by analytics, the one area of importance that he oversees is how his players and coaches interact.
And yet, even during the most successful 10 weeks in Eagles history, the coach is raising more questions than he is answering – literally and figuratively.
For example, during his brief NFL-mandated interview with Fox sideline reporter Erin Andrews before the start of the second half, Sirianni refused to acknowledge that Saquon Barkley stayed on the sideline for the entire second quarter because of a leg injury. The coach offered the lame explanation that Kenny Gainwell is good, too. It was the other running back’s turn.
My first thought was, Sirianni realizes these games are televised, doesn’t he? He must know we saw Barkley limping to the sideline after a brutal hit to the side of his leg late in the first quarter, no? He has to realize we saw Barkley flexing his leg repeatedly during the downtime, don’t you think?
Hey, I get it. In the big picture of a potential Super Bowl season, the coach hiding the truth from the public is barely worth a mention, and no one more so than Sirianni, who treats every news conference like a mine field he has to navigate.
But then a more revealing moment was telecast for the world to see. Sirianni simply couldn’t deny that he had a screaming match on the sideline with defensive-line coach Clint Hurtt after stud tackle Jalen Carter took a swing at tight end Connor Heyward during a Pittsburgh punt early in the fourth quarter.
When the camera panned the sideline, Sirianni and Hurtt were seen screaming into each other’s faces. Of course, Sirianni will never tell the truth about matters like this – he has four years of deception and fabrication to support that perception.
If it’s easier to lie, Sirianni will lie. I interviewed him after every Eagles game for three years. I am an expert on his dishonesty. It is every bit as historic as his current winning streak.
“I’ll never get into the conversations I have with players,” the coach said of Carter after the game. “He made a play that is not part of our standard. My job is to correct that.”
I will offer no argument that it’s a coach’s job to address mistakes. But it sure looked like Hurtt wouldn’t let Sirianni do that. It sure looked like the defensive-line coach was preventing the head coach from dressing down his player. Above all, it sure didn’t look like Sirianni was adhering to the standard of behavior required of NFL head coaches.
What makes the current run of unprecedented success even more baffling is that the sideline incident came less than a week after a different clubhouse issue exploded into the public consciousness. This time it involved Sirianni, quarterback Jalen Hurts and wide receiver A.J. Brown.
Basically, it is always the same complaint with Brown. An elite receiver, he wants the ball more than he’s getting it, and – unlike Sirianni – he’s not timid about expressing his discontent.
On Sunday, after his latest public plea for more work, Brown was targeted 11 times against Pittsburgh, catching eight balls for 110 yards and a touchdown. In other words, he had a point. When Hurts is throwing the ball in Brown’s direction, usually good things happen for the Eagles.
At the same time, Brown’s public disagreement with the play-calling and with his quarterback’s inability to spot him downfield seems directly connected to the culture of the team, which – need I remind you? – is the one area of Sirianni’s supposed strength as a coach.
How healthy is the culture of the team if internal disputes are spilling out into the public this way, especially with a head coach as secretive as Sirianni is? Does it at least raise questions about how effective the head coach is at getting the many components of an NFL team to coexist?
Inevitably, all of this leads back to the mystery of these 2024 Eagles: How are they doing this? How are they getting closer to the biggest prize of the regular season, a bye and home field all the way to the Super Bowl? How are they the hottest team in the NFL, one year after an equally historic collapse?
I have no explanation for this – none at all. By all conventional methods of analysis, Nick Sirianni is inept. His play-calling was so bad, he relinquished the responsibility a few games into his first season in Philadelphia. He has never had much of anything to do with defense or special teams. His decision-making on the sideline has been under heavy scrutiny throughout his tenure, analytics or no analytics.
And now the culture of the team is in question as well.
Meanwhile, Sirianni just keeps winning.
According to these old eyes, what’s happening right now is actually more than a mystery.
It’s a miracle.