Nick Sirianni's future with the Philadelphia Eagles appears to be secure.
Sirianni is scheduled to meet with the Philly media on Wednesday -- alongside general manager Howie Roseman -- in a sign that he will be back as head coach for the 2024 season, NFL Network Insider Mike Garafolo reported on Monday.
Despite having led Philadelphia to three playoff berths in his three seasons in charge, Sirianni's status as the team's head coach came into question after the team lost five of its last six regular-season games ahead of a blowout playoff defeat to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to conclude Super Wild Card Weekend.
Owner Jeffrey Lurie has decided to stay the course with Sirianni, though major changes to Sirianni's staff have already begun. NFL Network Insiders Ian Rapoport and Tom Pelissero reported on Sunday that Sirianni had fired defensive coordinator Sean Desai, who saw his role diminished at the end of the season when assistant Matt Patricia assumed play-calling duties.Â
Sirianni replaced Doug Pederson in 2021 and led a quick turnaround for a club that went 4-11-1 in 2020.
Sirianni, who received support from players with his future seemingly in the balance, is 34-17 after three campaigns in Philly. Over those three seasons, he's also posted a 2-3 playoff record with wild-card losses to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the 2021 and '23 seasons sandwiched around a Super Bowl berth.
This season, the Eagles raced out to the top record in the NFL at 10-1 before suffering a meltdown of epic proportions.
They lost their next two games against the San Francisco 49ers and Dallas Cowboys by a combined score of 75-32, then Sirianni took play-calling duties away from defensive Desai, only to lose to the Seahawks on a 92-yard game-winning drive by Seattle's backup quarterback Drew Lock.
Although they stopped the bleeding with a one-possession win over the New York Giants in Week 16, the next two weeks it was more of the same, with a blown 15-point lead to the Cardinals and a 27-10 demolition at the hands of the Giants in a rematch to conclude the regular season as Philadelphia fell to second in the NFC East.
Philadelphia entered the playoffs with no momentum and zero answers in any phase.
It showed as the Eagles were blown away by the same Buccaneers team they had defeated, 25-11, back in the glory days of Week 3.
It was an impossible end to see coming until recently, but the seeds might have been planted long ago.
Philly was a force in 2022 -- a jump that happened to occur after a wild-card loss to the Tom Brady-led Buccaneers in the 2021 wild-card round.
Jalen Hurts, the upstart leader of the NFL's third-ranked offense in both points and yards, finished as the MVP runner-up in his second season as a full-time starter. The defense combined a ferocious pass rush with a lockdown secondary to finish eighth in points allowed and second in yards surrendered while coming two shy of matching the 1984 Bears' single-season record of 72 sacks.
That success attracted eager eyes across the league, though. The Cardinals poached defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon away as their next head coach, and the Colts tabbed offensive coordinator Shane Steichen to be theirs.
The Eagles became the sixth Super Bowl participant to lose both coordinators in the offseason. After their loss to the Bucs, they became the sixth such team to miss out on a return Super Bowl trip.
Philadelphia's defense took the hardest hit in 2023. The Eagles plummeted to 30th in points allowed and 26th in yards by the end of the regular season, and the Bucs' bottom-12 offense lit them up on Super Wild Card Weekend for 32 points and 426 total yards.
While the offensive decline was by no means precipitous under new OC Brian Johnson, Hurts was noticeably less efficient while his interceptions jumped from six to 15.
Steichen's version of the offense surpassed 400 total yards in 10 games last year -- and twice more in the playoffs. The 2023 Eagles did so five times, including just once after Week 5, and closed out with 276 in the postseason loss.
It's a troubling trend that Sirianni must now get ahead of this offseason.
There's much work to do in Philadelphia, but Sirianni is set to return with designs of returning his squad to the NFC championship form seen in the 2022 season.
