“I’m sorry and disappointed at how my energy was directed at the end of the game,” Eagles Coach Nick Sirianni said.
Eagles Coach Nick Sirianni apologized Monday for having jawed with fans in Philadelphia the day before, in an episode that occurred in the closing moments of his team’s narrow win over the struggling Cleveland Browns.
“I was trying to bring energy and enthusiasm yesterday, and I’m sorry and disappointed at how my energy was directed at the end of the game,” Sirianni said during a virtual news conference. “My energy should be all-in on coaching, motivating and celebrating with our guys. I’ve got to have better wisdom and discernment of when to use that energy, and that wasn’t the time.”
While the Eagles were able to improve to 3-2 on Sunday, fans showed their discontent at times with a 20-16 victory that may have felt less than convincing given the struggles of the Browns, who fell to 1-5 and have fielded the league’s worst offense by some metrics. The score was tied well into the fourth quarter of the game, which reportedly also featured some chants calling for Sirianni’s firing.
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With less than a minute to go and the win finally secured as his Eagles were kneeling out the clock, the 43-year-old coach was shown on the Fox telecast turning toward the stands at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field. Sirianni could be seen cupping his ear and gesticulating while offering some of his thoughts to the crowd.
At a postgame news conference after the victory, Sirianni was asked about that interaction.
“Just excited to get the win,” he said with a smile.
When the coach was asked about his demonstrative behavior during the game, which included exchanges with a pair of Cleveland defenders, he replied, “I was having fun.”
“I was having fun,” Sirianni repeated, “and I kind of got some feedback from the guys, the sense of like: ‘We need you back, Nick. We need your energy. We need your focus.’ I’ve gotten that from a couple players. When I’m operating and having fun, I think that breeds to the rest of the football team. If I want the guys to celebrate and be themselves after big plays, then I should probably do that myself, right?
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“Now there’s times for that and times not for that. I have to have wisdom and discernment of when to do that and when not to do that.”
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On Monday — after Sirianni’s behavior at the stadium was widely criticized — the coach said his decision to apologize was made on his own, without input from Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie or anyone else in the organization. He likened his change of tone to the revisions coaches routinely make, such as with strategic choices, after conducting a film review.
“There’s play calls in the game that you go through,” he told reporters, “and game management things that you go through and say, ‘You know, at the time, I thought this was the right thing,’ and then you evaluate everything.”
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Sirianni has long been known to wear his emotions on his sleeve in a manner somewhat uncommon for the usually buttoned-up NFL coaching ranks. That wasn’t a major issue when he was taking over an Eagles team in 2021 that had gone 4-11-1 the year before and producing a winning record right away, or when he was leading the 2022 squad to a Super Bowl appearance.
The vibes in Philadelphia began to change after the Eagles got off to a 10-1 start last season and Sirianni subsequently proved unable to stem a losing spiral. His team ended the season on a 1-6 skid, including a lopsided playoff loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
That landed Sirianni on what some saw as a hot seat to start this season, and the temperature was hardly lowered when his highly regarded squad began with a 2-2 record before its Week 5 bye. Those two wins were by a total of eight points, and one of the losses was another rout at the hands of the Buccaneers that ushered Philadelphia into its week off.
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The Eagles were able to come out of the bye with a result that got them back over .500, but at least a few fans were left wanting more.
“We thrive off the crowd when they cheer for us. … We hear them when they boo,” Sirianni said after Sunday’s win. “We don’t necessarily like it — I don’t think that’s productive for anybody — but when they cheer for us and when we’ve got them rolling, we love it.”
At his postgame news conference, Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts confirmed he was one of the players who had encouraged Sirianni to “be himself.”
“It’s just a reassurance of: We trust who you are, we trust where you are as a coach, and we know we can build with you,” Hurts told reporters then. “It’s about doing it together. … I’m excited for him and his growth, and [to] continue to see where he’s going, and I think it will continue to help our football team.”
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To a reporter’s question Monday about finding a “happy medium” after he perhaps went “overboard” in accepting his players’ encouragement to show more energy, Sirianni replied, “I don’t think there’s a playbook for that, but at the end of the day, you want to be passionate and have energy … but it’s having that discernment of when to do that.”
“Everything has my name on it,” he said, “and that’s why the self-reflection at the end is critical, because the only way you get better is if you look yourself in the mirror and say where you could have done better.”
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