Lurie explains his decision to maintain Sirianni after its collapse in 2023.

Over two months after the Eagles’ season ended with an epic collapse, owner Jeffrey Lurie met with Eagles reporters at the NFL’s annual league meetings. And there was one key issue to be asked: Why keep Nick Sirianni?

The Eagles went apart down the stretch in 2023, losing six of their last seven games, including a first-round playoff loss. But even with the massive turnover of the coaching staff under Sirianni, the head coach remains.

“We go through a very, very intensive process after every single season,” Lurie said from the Ritz-Carlton Orlando resort. “This season was no different. Extremely sad finale to the season—the last five, six games. It was terribly disappointing to me and quite frustrating for all of us.

“But what we do is, and I insist on this, that there’s no recency bias, there’s no latency bias, and there’s no bias. Take a very close look at exactly what the entire season looked like, what the entire history has been over the last few years for our organization and for our team, and listen.”

And when Lurie took a step back and listened to Sirianni, general manager Howie Roseman, players, and more, he ultimately opted to retain Sirianni for a fourth season despite the dismal conclusion of 2023.

Lurie pointed out the success under Sirianni before the breakdown at the end of this past season, mentioning a 31-7 record before the crash. Lurie said he didn’t want to fall victim to recency bias.

“A very disappointing ending, but I don’t take 31-7 in the National Football League. That’s extraordinary,” Lurie said. “And so the ingredients that I’ve always seen with Nick are very obvious: the ability to connect, the ability to be authentic, an incredible work ethic, and a high football IQ.

All the reasons that he was hired in the first place have been almost heightened in the first three years because they’ve been extraordinarily successful, and yet that doesn’t ever take away from the hard look at the disappointment and frustration when it ended.

“So I don’t mean to diminish that in the slightest, because I don’t. I live that, and I care. So every part of why we were not able to be resilient as we thought enters into that analysis.”

Lurie told us that the key difference between the Eagles and the other top contenders in the NFL in 2023 was that they couldn’t steady things once they ended up in a tailspin. Both teams in the Super Bowl—the 49ers and Chiefs—had tough stretches during the season but ended up playing well coming into the playoffs. The Eagles certainly didn’t, and it needs to be rectified.

One of the attempts the Eagles made to pull themselves out of that collapse was to replace defensive coordinators in Week 15, a move Lurie admitted bluntly “didn’t work.” But he also applauded Sirianni for his courageous approach and for not depending on familiarity.

After listening to Sirianni and Roseman, Lurie stated he was encouraged by their intentions for the future. This seems to be the other primary reason why Sirianni is back for the 2024 season.

Back in 2020, when the Eagles sacked Doug Pederson, there were evident disputes regarding the future of the coaching staff. That wasn’t the case this time. While Lurie indicated he didn’t get involved in picking the future offensive and defensive coordinators, he very plainly favored Sirianni’s picks of Kellen Moore as the OC and Vic Fangio as the DC. Lurie was impressed by Sirianni’s “proactive” approach for the future of the coaching staff.

Lurie has spoken at great lengths before about his stance on the significance of assistant coaches, specifically coordinators, and on Tuesday, he even referred to spending top cash to get the best prospects.

“The things with Nick that I have to say were really impressive were wanting to truly improve the ingredients of the offense, truly improve who was going to lead, in terms of leading the offense and the direction it would go,” Lurie said. “I wanted it to be much more innovative and dynamic. Of course, bring the elements that brought us a lot of success, but be very open to selecting the best potential offensive coordinator.

“And the same with the defensive coordinator. He’s more of an offensive head coach, but he realized that Vic Fangio was somebody who would be an exceptional defensive coordinator for us. I mean, we spoke about his methods for years, and all the individuals that you know, he produced, and now we have the guy who actually sort of fathered a specific style of defense.

“And so Nick’s conscious desire to have top-notch coordinators under him really drove a lot of the strategy, and he was hell-bent on making sure we had the best.

And you know, I’m really pleased by his analysis of where we’re at—no excuses, basically a fundamental understanding of what needs to be better than the previous five or six weeks of the season—and not only a return to our championship-caliber performance and execution, but an improvement on that too. Not simply go back to what we were, but attempt to be better than what we were in the relatively recent past.”

Sirianni, 42, will start his fourth season as the Eagles’ head coach in 2024 with a 34-17 record and visits to the playoffs in all three of his seasons since being hired in 2021.

But given the collapse in 2023 and the turmoil on the coaching staff under him, there’s an evident thought that Sirianni’s leash could be shorter than ever coming into this next season.

“Every coach is in a high-pressure situation,” Lurie added. “Nick has had a pretty spectacular first three seasons, and he’s shown all the ingredients to have outstanding success. So I’m simply looking forward.”