Despite a disastrous finish this year, Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni appears to be returning for the 2024 season.
The Eagles put out word that Sirianni and general manager Howie Roseman will hold their end-of-the-season press conferences on Wednesday. That’s the strongest sign yet that Sirianni will return. And it doesn’t seem like the Eagles are going to make any public declaration.
Of course, there are likely to be other major changes coming.
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Some of them are already underway. Sirianni fired defensive coordinator Sean Desai this weekend and the search for the next DC is in full swing.
While the Eagles collapsed at the tail end of the 2023 season, the 42-year-old Sirianni has guided the Eagles to the playoffs in each of his first three seasons at the helm and took them all the way to the Super Bowl last year. He came pretty darn close to winning it too.
Over the last three seasons, Sirianni has a regular season record of 34-17. That winning percentage of .667 is fifth best in the NFL since 2021 behind Kansas City (.725), Dallas (.706), Buffalo (.700) and San Francisco (.686). And that winning percentage for Sirianni is the highest mark by any coach in Eagles history.
On top of that, the Eagles just won 11 wins in back-to-back seasons for just the third time in franchise history.
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When the Eagles cleaned out their lockers following their season-ending playoff loss in Tampa, Sirianni received support from some longtime members of the team, including Jason Kelce and Fletcher Cox.
“What is there to talk about? This man, he’s a winner,” Cox said. “He’s a winning head coach. Did we have some bumps this year? Yeah. But every team, every organization, everybody goes through it. But we don’t look at firing a man that has obviously won 10+ games two years in a row, that’s took this organization to three playoff appearances in a row.
“He’s a good leader for this team. He does a really good job. Did we come up short? Yeah. Did things happen this year? Yeah. But I don’t discuss about firing a man. This man got a family. I don’t discuss anything about that.”
But there are obviously reasons why Sirianni’s job came into question recently. The Eagles got off to a quick 10-1 start this season before dropping 5 of their last 6 games in the regular season and getting bounced by the 9-8 Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the first-round of the playoffs.
Not only were the Eagles losing games down the stretch, but they were losing them in embarrassing fashion. Over the final seven games of the 2023 season, the Eagles had a point differential of -82.
And even before the Eagles began losing games down the stretch, there were some cracks in the foundation. They finished this season with a point differential of +5, which is the fifth worst mark ever for a team that won 11+ games in the regular season.
The last time Lurie met with his head coach in a meeting to determine his future, he didn’t like the answers Doug Pederson presented. That led to an awkward divorce after the 2020 season. The Eagles managed to win seven more games in 2023 than they did in 2020. And Sirianni clearly had answers for the future that pleased Lurie more than the ones Pederson presented in 2020.
Some of those answers were likely about the future of the Eagles’ coaching staff. Sirianni lost both of his coordinators after the Super Bowl season when Shane Steichen and Jonathan Gannon left for head coaching gigs. They were replaced by Brian Johnson and Desai. And Desai was replaced during the 2023 season with disastrous results. It’s probably safe to assume there will be some significant changes to Sirianni’s coaching staff going forward, starting with finding a new defensive coordinator.
The process to find a new DC will very likely be collaborative between Sirianni and the front office, led by longtime general manager Howie Roseman. But there will also likely be significant changes on the offensive side of things too. Johnson is reportedly expected to not return as well.
Because while the Eagles’ defense was unsurprisingly worse in 2023, their offense was worse too. And that’s a unit that returned 9 of 11 starters from the Super Bowl team, including an MVP runner-up, the best offensive line in football, two stud wide receivers and a top-tier tight end. The failure on that side of the ball was perhaps more concerning as the coaching staff was being evaluated.
The Eagles were still a top-10 offense in the league this season and Lurie clearly has faith that Sirianni will be able to get them back into elite territory going forward.
With Lurie’s decision to bring Sirianni back for the 2024 season, the head coach will presumably be on a much shorter leash this coming season than he was coming off a Super Bowl appearance.
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