Assessing Sirianni’s impact on the Eagles

With the Philadelphia Eagles being on their bye week, we now have time to assess a lot of different aspects of the team.
The quarterback will always be the talk of the town here in Philadelphia, but how soon have we forgotten that we have a rookie head coach? The Eagles head coach was once viewed as a meme by people throughout the city. Fans were constantly making fun of his many analogies, as well as simply questioning his ability to coach.
Whether it was a flower analogy or the many different graphic t-shirt’s Sirianni wore; the Eagles head coach was under constant scrutiny by the fans and the media alike.
Regardless of where you stand in the quarterback debate, there’s no denying the growth the young signal caller for the Eagles has made. They started the season off with a 2-5 record through seven games. At the time, it seemed like this was going to be a long season. On top of the slow start, the Eagles were facing injuries yet again on both sides of the ball.
Fast forward to now, and the Eagles find themselves in the playoff hunt. This is in large part due to Nick Sirianni’s constant adjustments to the players around him. The Eagles were a very pass-heavy team the first seven weeks of the season. Sirianni then decided to change the offense to a run-dominant approach. This paradigm shift has completely turned things around for the Eagles. Not only that, but it is a better suited offense for Jalen Hurt’s skillset.
The Eagles currently have the number one ranked rushing attack in the entire NFL. After consecutive weeks of winning games with a heavy rushing attack, many questioned if it could be sustained. Then, the Eagles completely dominated the Saints number one ranked rush defense in week 11. They have now racked up 175 or more rush yards in each of the last five games.
“I think that’s the sign of a good coach, that you’re going to change based off of your personnel, right? We have a certain personnel in place. We’re going to figure out what they can do well and what their strengths are, and we’re going to play to their strengths and we are going to try to keep them out of situations that they don’t excel well at. That can change. We can look at the tape and think about, ‘Hey, well this would look really good. This is how he fits a couple things we’ve done in the past.’ But that can change based off of practice. In practice, say, ‘We’re going to have to see it in practice.’ Then that could change based off of a game. It’s an ever-changing offensive philosophy. Sure, we have our core plays in place that we want to do, that we want to be good at, because that’s what we do. But a lot of it is going to depend on our personnel and utilizing our personnel to their strengths and their weaknesses.”
No matter how the rest of the season plays out for the Eagles, and more specifically the quarterback situation, it sure seems like the hiring of Sirianni has been a success so far. Out of the seven rookie head coaches hired this offseason, he ranks second in total wins this season. Only Brandon Staley of the Chargers has achieved more victories.
This season was viewed as a rebuilding year for the Philadelphia Eagles. A time in which they would give Hurts the keys and find out if he’s “the guy.” Nobody saw the Eagles even being in the playoff hunt by the end of the year. There were indeed growing pains in the beginning of the season, but it appears Sirianni has the makings of a solid head coach in this league. That is all the Eagles can ask for.
Mandatory Credit; USA Today