Hope All You Want, but Nick Sirianni Won’t Be Fired Midseason
For the first time in five years, the Eagles coached by Nick Sirianni have a losing record.
They’ve faced injuries, sure, but a roster like the Philadelphia Eagles should never be below .500.
“I lost us that game,” said Sirianni after the team’s dramatic loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars in London. If the winning drought continues, he’ll be losing his job in addition to football games.
Eagles fans called for his job not even a season after a Super Bowl victory. Now it’s another year removed from that season, and it looks like nothing will change Eagles fans’ minds about their coach.
It doesn’t seem like it would take much more for Sirianni to be fired. However, many Eagles fans have already waited longer than they hoped for Sirianni to get canned, and they’ll have to wait much longer.
Here are the reasons why the Eagles will likely let Sirianni finish the season before deciding his future as the team’s head coach.
1) No Replacement
Say Howie Roseman and Jeffrey Lurie want to fire Nick Sirianni. Say they want to do it so bad that they would say good riddance today if they were able. As soon as Sirianni walks out that door, the Eagles lose whatever structure they had in place.
They need a new head coach as soon as possible, and they can’t poach from other teams; it’s still the middle of the season. So who’s the interim?
Not Vic Fangio; it wouldn’t work. He’s one of the best defensive minds in the league, but it doesn’t seem to translate to winning football in the head coaching role. In three years with the Denver Broncos, he had three losing records.
But even if he was good at it, it wouldn’t matter. He’s comfortable in his role, and the Eagles have no business asking their best coordinator to do more for a team that has already failed to meet expectations. Fangio has publicly stated that he wouldn’t be the head coach for another NFL team.
If Fangio wasn’t considering another team’s job in the last two head coaching cycles, why would he want to be thrown into the fire of a collapsing team without even an offseason to prepare for the administrative duties a head coach is expected to handle?
The interim definitely wouldn’t be Sean Mannion. The Eagles’ new offensive coordinator had plenty of buzz entering the season, but it hasn’t shown up on the field. The Eagles have the worst second-half offense in the NFL; the passing game has been lackluster, and the running game has been invisible.
Even if Mannion were leading a fantastic offense, it’s still his first year as a coordinator. He had a meteoric rise up the NFL coaching tree to his current position, but making him head coach after his start to the season, even just as an interim, would be asking for disaster.
It seems as though the Eagles’ coaching staff could only get worse by firing Nick Sirianni, at least for now.
2) The Eagles Owe It to Sirianni to Let Him Finish the Season
Is Nick Sirianni a frustrating head coach? Yes, of course. But is he also one of the best winners in NFL history? Also yes. If the Eagles fired a head coach with a 61-28 regular-season record, two NFC Championships, and a Super Bowl, why would any outside coach want to join the staff after a 2-3 start with losses to good teams?
You might not like it, but Nick Sirianni is the Eagles’ most successful coach in the Super Bowl era. The Sirianni-led Eagles have had so many great moments. The great moments outnumber the bad ones tenfold. It would be disrespectful to cut him off five weeks into his only unsuccessful season.
Getting rid of him won’t magically make the Eagles good. If he does nothing, as the fans say, then getting rid of him will not make a difference either way. He’s earned this chance to redeem himself.
Sirianni may not look like he does much from the outside. But bad coaches don’t win that many games because of a great roster. Nick Sirianni has done enough for the Eagles to trust him to finish the season. If he fails, he can go.
But why not give him the chance to succeed?
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Categorized:Eagles