The Philadelphia Eagles did not have a strong close to the season last year under head coach Nick Sirianni as the team lost six of their last seven games including a playoff game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Despite the late-season slide, Eagles team owner Jeffrey Lurie decided to keep Sirianni as the team’s head coach this upcoming season – and he’s now explaining why.
During a meeting with reporters at the NFL’s annual league meetings in Florida, Jeffrey Lurie explained why he chose not to fire Nick Sirianni after meeting with him following the season despite the struggles.
“The things with Nick I have to say were really impressive were wanting to truly improve the ingredients of the offense, truly improve who was gonna — in terms of leading the offense and the direction it would go,” Lurie said according to Pro Football Talk. “Wanted to be much more innovative, much more dynamic. Of course bring the things that brought us a lot of success, but very open to finding the best possible offensive coordinator, and the same with defensive coordinator.”
The Eagles brought in Kellen Moore as the team’s next offensive coordinator and Vic Fangio as the new defensive coordinator. And it sounds like those two hires are what have Lurie optimistic about the future.
“Nick’s conscious desire to have top-notch coordinators under him really drove a lot of the strategy, and he was hellbent on making sure we had the best,” Lurie said. “And, you know, highly encouraged by his both analysis of where we’re at, no excuses, basically a fundamental understanding of what needs to be better than the last five or six weeks of the season.”
We’ll have to see how Sirianni performs.