Even three years beyond my radio days, I still receive emails ranging from loud cheers to brazen boos, with one question hovering above all the noise:
Why don’t you like Nick Sirianni?
I have tried basic logic, shrill emotion and everything In between. The truth is, I have never been clear in my responses because I have not been not entirely certain myself.
On the one hand, the Eagles coach has been to two Super Bowls in his first four NFL seasons here and is the reigning champion. What’s more important than winning?
On the other hand, his news conferences are an insult to our intelligence, his histrionics on the sideline are embarrassing and my three years interviewing him after games convinced me that he was not too bright.
Now, thanks to the Birds’ 24-20 win in the season opener on Sept. 4, I can explain much more clearly why I can’t stand the guy.
It took all of six seconds in the new season to crystallize why I will never be a fan of Nick Sirianni.
By now, you know what happened. Jalen Carter, the best defensive player on the Eagles, spit on Dak Prescott before the first snap and was ejected from the game.
In the annals of stupid moments by clueless players, this has to rank near the top. The brand-new championship banner was proudly flapping in the breeze at the Linc when Carter found a way, in exactly six seconds, to desecrate it.
A month of defensive game-planning was washed away by one loogie landing somewhere on the Dallas quarterback. Yes, I know. Apparently, Prescott spit first — on the ground near Carter. That’s not a good enough excuse for anybody, ever.
If Dak baited Carter, bravo to the quarterback. He managed to eliminate his biggest threat with a few words and a very productive expectorate.
What I wanted to see — needed to see — was Sirianni reacting strongly to an outrageous, selfish act of immaturity. What I did see is . . . . very little. The coach, who is famous for his sideline tantrums, showed no apparent emotion.
My first thought was, where is the accountability? Is the country-club atmosphere of a Sirianni team even more so now that the Eagles won a championship? Can the players say and do whatever they please with no fear of reprisals from the guy in charge?
Now I know the answer to those questions.
No, there is no accountability, at least from the coach in public.
Yes, it appears that the country club just became even cushier.
And obviously, the players can do whatever they damn well please with this coach.
Hey, I’m old-school — probably a dinosaur at this point. But is the sports world so soft now that there appears to be no place for some strong, constructive discipline, especially for childish, entitled stars like Carter?
If a coach is not going to law down the law publicly after a disgusting act like that, when will he?
I have the answer to that question now, too.
Never.
After the game, despite the hour delay for the storm, I hung in there well past midnight to see how Sirianni would handle Carter’s spit heard round the world.
I should have gone to sleep.
“I’m going to keep all our conversations, and all my disciplinary things in-house,” he said. “But we’ve got to fix it as coaches.”
The coach said the same thing five different ways, until he finally came as close to addressing the act as he will ever come.
“We needed (Carter) out there today, and he wasn’t out there,” Sirianni said, a master of the obvious. “I want them to play with emotion, but you have to play within the rules.”
Powerful stuff. Zzzzzz. I guess the old maxim, Spare the rod, spoil the child, is outdated now.
This gentle approach, by the way, clearly is not working. As my former co-host at WIP Marcus Hayes pointed out in The Inquirer, Carter has already received $56,672 in fines over his two-plus seasons in the NFL. Two of the first four incidents were for fighting on the field during games last season.
How many acts of team-damaging stupidity will it take before the coach holds a player publicly accountable? If five finable offenses for bad behavior in two years is not enough, how many? Ten? Twenty?
Sirianni even said at one point that the Birds needed Carter out there because he’s such a good player. In other words, the coach found a way to offer a public testimonial to his spitting star defensive tackle at a time when everybody else was cackling over how stupid the player was.
The bottom line for me is, I despise coaches and managers who abdicate their responsibility to discipline their players in the interest of clubhouse culture.
Jalen Carter embarrassed the Eagles — in public, on national TV, in front of 20 million witnesses. He needed an equally public rebuke for what he did. Instead, his punishment, if any, will be kept in-house.
Oh, and please don’t forget that Carter is a really good player. The coach definitely does not want to keep that opinion in-house, even if the timing is not ideal.
I love the Eagles, but I will never like Nick Sirianni.
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The most bizarre thing about the opening game is how little it did to address the many questions we have about the 2025 Eagles.
For example, will the defense be good enough after losing five starters? How can we know? With Carter missing, Dallas scored on its first four possessions. Would the Cowboys have as much success with Carter presiding in the middle of the defensive line? We can’t say.
And then there was the No. 1 concern, at least to me, the play-calling of Kevin Patullo, longtime Sirianni bobo and a novice at calling plays in the NFL. The offense was efficient, if not unstoppable, before the storm break, but Jalen Hurts freelanced repeatedly. Again, it’s too early to say.
Finally, what is it about A.J. Brown that he gets ignored so often? Brown was targeted one time, late in the game, for eight yards. He is the best wide receiver in Eagles history, and he is often made invisible not by the defense but by his own coaches.
There some other obvious problems. The biggest is Adoree Jackson, a cornerback who kept getting undressed by Prescott and his excellent receivers. Jackson allowed five catches on seven targets for 103 yards and five first downs. He was awful.
Jackson’s ineptitude would be a much bigger issue this week if not for the three fatal drops by WR CeeDee Lamb. Jackson’s numbers would be even worse, and the howls of anguish would be much louder, if Lamb made any of those catches.
Meanwhile, where the hell was the pass rush? The Eagles defense had zero sacks against a visibly less mobile 32-year-old quarterback, and precious few hurries. I knew the Eagles were going to miss Brandon Graham and Josh Sweat, but not this much. No sacks? None?
I could go through all of the things I liked about the win – the great kicking of Jake Elliott, punting of Braden Mann, linebacker play by Zack Baum and rookie Jihaad Campbell, the clutch fumble recovery by Quinyon Mitchell – but the truth is, there was only one star in the opener, Jalen Hurts.
His ability to scope out the defense and find places to run is becoming world-class in his sixth season. My only criticism is that he needs to keep track of A.J. Brown a lot more. Hurts has no choice but to make up for the foibles of the guys calling the plays.
The way I look at it now, a few days after the win, is that the Eagles somehow survived the dumb strategy not to play starters at all in the preseason, the total lack of a pass rush, the idiotic ignorance of a great wide receiver and a long storm delay.
Hey, they won. But if they play like that all season, with the brutal schedule they have, they won’t have a spittin’ chance to win it all again.