Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie and head coach Nick Sirianni are scheduled for their annual exit interview on Friday, according to multiple reports.
Sirianni, 34-17 in the regular season with the Eagles, will be asked to pitch Lurie on keeping his job, according to multiple reports, with anticipated mandates for changes at both coordinator positions.
Philadelphia’s season went up in flames with losses in six of the final seven games, the last of which was a lopsided 32-9 defeat at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the NFC wild-card round Monday night.
Super Bowl runners-up last season, the Eagles were in the driver’s seat in the NFC and controlled the East division in mid-November. While the end result of 11 victories in 2023 signal a successful season for most, the unraveling in Philadelphia could prompt a harsh review from Lurie and team president Howie Roseman.
A peek in the rearview mirror offers a glimpse at Lurie’s mindset on such matters.
He made what he called a “tough, but unemotional decision” to fire Doug Pederson at the end of the 2020 season because he felt the future was brighter with a fresh start. He followed a similar instinct parting with Andy Reid in 2012 while describing the move as “extremely difficult” because of their close personal relationship.
“My first allegiance is what will be best for the Philadelphia Eagles and our fans for the next three, four, five years,” Lurie said shortly after firing Pederson. “It’s not based on does someone deserve to hold their job or deserve to get fired; that’s a different bar. Very few people probably after success deserve to lose their job. This is much more about the evaluation of whether the Eagles, moving forward, our best option is to have a new coach.”
Players lined up to go to bat for Sirianni on Wednesday.
Defensive tackle Fletcher Cox, who played for Reid and Pederson with the Eagles, passionately endorsed Sirianni in a heated exchange with media gathered around his locker.
Cox, who said he hadn’t decided whether to play another season, didn’t hesitate when asked whether Sirianni should be back in 2024.
“What is there to talk about? This man is a winner,” Cox said Wednesday. “He’s a winner head coach. Did we have some bumps this year? Yeah. But every team … goes through it.
“But we don’t look at firing a man who has won 10-plus games two years in a row … (made the playoffs) three years in a row. Have some respect. He’s a good leader for this team, and he does a really good job. Did we come up short? Yeah. Did things happen this year? Yeah.”
The Eagles lost five of their final six regular-season games, tumbling from possible No. 1 seed in the NFC to hitting the road for the postseason as a wild-card.
Sirianni said after the game he wasn’t thinking about his future, and players said Wednesday that job status and returning next season wasn’t discussed in a team meeting before they were dismissed to start the offseason.
“Think Nick’s a great coach, great head coach,” center Jason Kelce said. “Obviously nobody was good enough this year. I wasn’t, none of the players, none of the coaches were good enough down the stretch. That’s the reality of this business. It’s a collective thing.
“He does a lot of things structurally and organizationally that I think are really well done. Obviously we’ve got a lot of things to fix to improve the outlook of the offense in general, from my perspective, for next year, but I think very, very highly of Nick Sirianni.”
Kelce, who was drafted during Reid’s tenure and won a Super Bowl under Pederson, said reports of his retirement are premature, and he remains undecided about his NFL future.
–Field Level Media