play1:06When will the Eagles’ offensive struggles catch up to them?Dan Orlovsky joins “Get Up” to explain why the Eagles’ lack of separation in the pass game might eventually come back to hurt them.
play2:06Graziano: Eagles’ O will have tougher time scoring without Lane JohnsonDan Graziano, Jeff Saturday and Domonique Foxworth explain why offensive tackle Lane Johnson’s Lisfranc injury is a big deal for the Eagles.
play1:52Stephen A.: The Eagles’ defense beat the Lions downStephen A. Smith details why he was impressed with the Eagles’ defense after a dominant performance against the Lions.
play1:00Yates: Jalen Hurts is a still a top-10 QB in Week 12Field Yates details the rough fantasy stretch Jalen Hurts has been on, but says Hurts is still a top-10 quarterback against the Cowboys.
play1:32Should fantasy managers start DeVonta Smith after a tough Week 11?Daniel Dopp breaks down the fantasy pros and cons for DeVonta Smith heading into Week 12.
What winning means to Sirianni and Hurts (2:08)Nick Sirianni and Jalen Hurts sit down with Chris Berman to discuss what winning means to them. (2:08)
When will the Eagles’ offensive struggles catch up to them?Dan Orlovsky joins “Get Up” to explain why the Eagles’ lack of separation in the pass game might eventually come back to hurt them.
Dan Orlovsky joins “Get Up” to explain why the Eagles’ lack of separation in the pass game might eventually come back to hurt them.
Graziano: Eagles’ O will have tougher time scoring without Lane JohnsonDan Graziano, Jeff Saturday and Domonique Foxworth explain why offensive tackle Lane Johnson’s Lisfranc injury is a big deal for the Eagles.
Dan Graziano, Jeff Saturday and Domonique Foxworth explain why offensive tackle Lane Johnson’s Lisfranc injury is a big deal for the Eagles.
Stephen A.: The Eagles’ defense beat the Lions downStephen A. Smith details why he was impressed with the Eagles’ defense after a dominant performance against the Lions.
Stephen A. Smith details why he was impressed with the Eagles’ defense after a dominant performance against the Lions.
Yates: Jalen Hurts is a still a top-10 QB in Week 12Field Yates details the rough fantasy stretch Jalen Hurts has been on, but says Hurts is still a top-10 quarterback against the Cowboys.
Field Yates details the rough fantasy stretch Jalen Hurts has been on, but says Hurts is still a top-10 quarterback against the Cowboys.
Should fantasy managers start DeVonta Smith after a tough Week 11?Daniel Dopp breaks down the fantasy pros and cons for DeVonta Smith heading into Week 12.
Argument 2: Anyone can win with this much talent …
Argument 4: We’re not really sure what he does here
Argument 6: The Eagles aren’t as impressive as they should be
Argument 7: When they were bad, it poisoned the well of public opinion
Every team has fans who get upset at the coaches, of course, and Eagles fans eventually grew tired of Andy Reid and ran him out of town, too. But even nationally, there isn’t the same respect paid toward Sirianni as there is toward young coaches like Sean McVay or Kyle Shanahan, even though Sirianni (arguably) has a better résumé than either coach — and any of his other under-50 counterparts around the NFL.
Jump to: Elite track record through five years Howie’s part | The roster | The assistants His real role | Fourth down | They should be better Bad-team influence | Sideline antics The verdict: How should we view Sirianni?
Just on a sheer, simple examination of Sirianni’s résumé, it seems impossible to argue with the idea that he’s off to the sort of start we associate with legendary head coaches. There’s nobody else in this generation who has been more successful this early in their career than the 44-year-old Sirianni.
Let’s start with the record. In the middle of his fifth year as an NFL head coach, Sirianni is 56-22, good for a .718 winning percentage. That’s roughly the equivalent of winning a little over 12 games every 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 over that same span.
Just behind Sirianni are the likes of Joe Gibbs (.699), Mike Tomlin (.688), Jim Harbaugh (.685), Mike Ditka (.685) and McVay (.680) — superstar coaches in more modern times. Nobody who started their NFL coaching career after 1990 has begun that career with a better winning percentage through five seasons than Sirianni.
When will the Eagles’ offensive struggles catch up to them?
At the same time, Sirianni was able to start his playoff run in Philadelphia by taking advantage of a seventh seed in 2021 that wasn’t available to many other coaches in prior seasons. Even so, if we limit this to coaches who have made three playoff trips in four years, Sirianni would still be in very rarified air. Through four full years, here are the neighborhoods in which Sirianni resides:
Gibbs and Tomlin each won one of those two Super Bowls. Seifert and Switzer both inherited teams that had won the Super Bowl literally in the season before their arrival. Tomlin’s Steelers had won the championship two years before he was appointed as head coach.
Even that 2020 team, though, was better than it seemed. The Eagles finished a hair under six expected wins by their point differential, and combined with their brutal injury luck, they ended up on the likely to improve list again in 2021. The 2021 version of the Football Outsiders Almanac projected the Eagles for 7.3 wins. Philly found something leaning into the quarterback run game with Hurts, who exceeded expectations in his first full year as a starter and went 9-8 against an easy schedule.
There are a lot of people who deserve credit for Philly’s quick rise back to prominence after that 2020 season. Sirianni does seem like one of them. Why doesn’t that always seem to be the case? I can see a few reasons why. Let’s run through them and see why there’s a disconnect between Sirianni’s résumé and the perception of him.
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 there’s no denying that Roseman has played a meaningful role in building Philadelphia’s two Super Bowl winners over the past decade.
Graziano: Eagles’ O will have tougher time scoring without Lane Johnson
There was even a subset of the fan base who thought the real mastermind behind Philly’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.)
There are plenty of veterans who have left other teams to join the Eagles under Sirianni, though, and it seems entirely fair to recognize how many of them got better after joining the Eagles (and/or got worse after leaving the organization). Some notable additions:
It has been easy to credit other coaches for some of the successes I mentioned earlier. Fangio gets credit for having the vision to move Baun back to linebacker while molding Mitchell and DeJean into instant standouts at cornerback. Stoutland has brought Becton and the young offensive linemen through, which opened up holes for Barkley. Steichen’s quarterback run scheme got the most out of Hurts. All of those things are true!
At the same time, Sirianni credited some of the 2021 improvement to Steichen taking over some of the playcalling responsibilities before ceding that job entirely to Steichen in 2022. Moore was the primary playcaller in 2024, although Sirianni admitted to calling plays from time to time. Sirianni has taken blame for some of the failings of the offense when it hasn’t worked, which can be both a reflection on his performance and something many coaches believe to be sound leadership.
And of course, when things haven’t worked, it’s fair to wonder if Sirianni has had the answers. The 2023 team faded badly down the stretch, although its problems were much worse on the defensive side of the ball than on offense. The offense has been frustrating for much of 2025, bailed out by the defense. (Though in a year of almost weekly remonstrations by fans, media members and Eagles players, the offense is still 15th in EPA per play.)
All of those things can simultaneously be true. It seems notable that Sirianni has continued to win and will likely make it to the playoffs in each of his first five seasons despite having the same offensive and defensive coordinator just once in back-to-back years. Steichen has had a great year in Indianapolis, but it’s the first year where either he, Moore or Gannon has looked like an elite head coach since leaving the Eagles.
Stephen A.: The Eagles’ defense beat the Lions down
Even the imports who won the title in 2024 had question marks. Moore had essentially been fired in consecutive years by the Cowboys and Chargers before joining the Eagles, and while I felt those moves were unwarranted, Moore had a reputation as being too cute in playcalling or leaning too heavily into the pass.
Fangio’s reputation around the league is legendary, but he had struggled as a head coach in Denver before being fired after one season in Miami, where the players openly celebrated his departure. Jevon Holland contrasted new coordinator Anthony Weaver to Fangio by saying the difference from the former was that Weaver was “a good person,” while Holland’s father compared Fangio to the iPhone 1.
I can see a case for this one, but I’d also argue that it’s partly perception. Sirianni wasn’t widely regarded as a hot young coaching candidate before joining the Eagles. He’s an offensive mind who didn’t call the plays in Indianapolis and hasn’t been the primary playcaller since Year 1 in Philly.
There’s one other thing Sirianni does very clearly have control over on Sundays and hasn’t won him any fans in recent weeks …
While those moves didn’t work, Sirianni’s aggressiveness has paid off at times. Since 2021, Sirianni has added 43.7 points of EPA with his decisions on fourth down, the second most of any team in the NFL behind the Lions. Some of that is a product of the tush push, of course, but the Eagles both developed, perfected and have come to exploit the tush push under Sirianni. Great short-yardage teams in the past, like the Cam Newton-era Panthers, didn’t get the most out of their schematic advantage.