Philly Front Office

From nearly getting fired during the bye week to Super Bowl Champion in about 4 months, Nick Sirianni is in line to be one of the highest paid coaches in football. No one embodies the Eagles mantra of “no one likes us, we don’t care” like our boy Nick. Make no mistake, EVERYONE else wanted him to fail. They hate him. Now they have to call him champ.

Speaking of which, do you know how many current head coaches have won a Super Bowl? Seven, and one of them is Pete Carroll who just came back. That’s it. Of those seven, Nick is one of only five to coach in at least two (only Andy has been there more than twice among active coaches). It should also be noted that Nick’s coaching resume is only four years long. Carroll and Mike Tomlin have had 18 and 17 years to build the same resume. Don’t listen to the nonsense, he’s objectively a great coach at this point.

Since he’s a great coach, what do great coaches get paid?

• Andy Reid is currently at the top of the heap and rightfully so. Say what you want about Andy, he’s done a lot of winning for a long time. He received a new contract before this past season at 5 years, $100m. At $20m per season, he is the highest paid.
• Andy received this new contract because the Broncos lured Sean Payton out of retirement and gave him $18m per season one year earlier. Payton won in his only Super Bowl appearance in 2009 but has since been suspended by the league for an entire season and retired once.
• Next up is Jim Harbaugh at $16m per season. He is an interesting case in that he has been to a Super Bowl before (losing to his brother with the 49ers) and won a college National Championship with Michigan. However, he also wears out his welcome after a few seasons and has previously washed out of the NFL. Still, he has his accolades.
• Sean McVay has a ring, another Super Bowl appearance, and only 8 years under his belt. He is making $15m per season. As much as I want to say bad things about him, there’s nothing bad to say. He is a legitimately great coach and probably Sirianni’s closest comparison.
• The NFL’s best offensive coordinator also happens to be a bad head coach with San Francisco. At $14m per season, Kyle Shanahan has been rewarded like one of the greats despite being the architect of some of the most traumatizing losses in league history. He has made it to 2 Super Bowls (3 if you count the Falcons Super Bowl 51 collapse) and lost both, one because he didn’t know the rules. He also completely botched an NFC Championship Game by allowing his QBs to get maimed on the field. Unlike Nick, he has no ability to make in game adjustments.
• Mike Tomlin has never had a losing record in 17 years (WTF!) and has been to two Super Bowls, winning one. He makes $12.5m per season and is the singular identity of Pittsburgh football.
• John Harbaugh won a Super Bowl and always has the Ravens in contention. For the last few years though, he and his QB have had no ability to win big games in the playoffs. He makes $12m per season.

We can’t just throw Nick into this mix without looking at what recent hires just received. The Bears gave Ben Johnson $13m annually and Liam Coen is getting around $12m from the Jags. Numbers on Pete Carroll with the Raiders, Aaron Glenn with the Jets, and Mike Vrabel with the Pats are not out yet, but you can imagine they are all between the Coen and Sean Payton range.

Let’s get back to Nick. He is not known to be an innovator on one side of the ball like Andy Reid or Sean McVay. That’s okay. Though most coaches come with a specialty, being a “guru” is not a virtue that automatically makes you a great coach. As Mike Tomlin and now Dan Campbell have shown, being a culture setter and leader is probably more important than being an offensive or defensive “genius.” This is where Nick Sirianni shines. For as bad as the 2023 Eagles finished, none of the players quit on Sirianni. The 2024 season started shaky, but it wasn’t from lack of effort. It was also one of the youngest rosters in the league. This Super Bowl team galvanized around its coach. This isn’t because he’s some kind of subjectively “cool” guy, it’s because he listens, trusts his players, and does not let his ego get in the team’s way. Too often “genius” coaches stubbornly coach the way they want to rather than the way they need to. They run their system regardless of their personnel to the team’s detriment (screams Chip Kelly into the spinning camera above). What I heard coming from the 2022 and 2024 Super Bowl teams is that the players came to Nick with their ideas to help the team, he listened, and winning changes were implemented. Nick Sirianni is a lot of things, but stubborn ain’t one of ’em (Boyd Crowder voice).

For as much as people want to take digs at Sirianni (and Hurts) for having a loaded roster, these people seem to ignore these benefits when discussing other coaches with full rosters like Campbell and Shanahan. That means it is purely a narrative issue, not a real issue. As if dealing with the personalities of a loaded roster that also happens to be young as hell isn’t part of the coaching calculus? Sirianni puts all of his players in positions to succeed. The same can’t be said for guys like Vrabel, Carroll, and especially Shanahan.

Entering the final year of his contract, there is absolutely no way Sirianni coaches this season as a lame duck. He just won the Super Bowl and literally everyone in the locker room and the city loves him. With that kind of juice, he is getting extended. Does he have Andy Reid money leverage? No. How about desperate Denver Broncos just traded a 3rd round pick and have to lure Sean Payton out of retirement leverage? Not quite there either. That being said, he has to get significantly more than Johnson and Coen received as first-time head coaches from teams that never made the Super Bowl (no idea what Kellen Moore received either by the way).

I keep coming back to Sean McVay. The resumes between the two are nearly identical. What McVay did in 5 years, Sirianni did in 4 (2 Super Bowl appearances, 1 win). In those 5 seasons McVay had a .679 winning percentage while Nick is at .706. McVay missed the playoffs in his 3rd year, while Nick has made the post season every year (but 2023 was a disaster). Even if you want to try to give McVay the edge on offense, the numbers do not bear that out. In his first 5 years, McVay’s Rams finished 3, 2, 10, 22, and 6th in the league in scoring. Over Sirianni’s first 4 seasons, the Eagles finished 12, 2, 7, and 5th with 3 different coordinators. Nick’s doing something right. Is there any reason they shouldn’t have similar contracts?

Even though McVay is the darling of announcers and pundits while Sirianni is relentlessly mocked and questioned, they deserve to be paid similarly based on merit. If McVay received $15m a few seasons ago, how is Sirianni not getting at least $16m per season? He needs to be getting more than Jim Harbaugh as well. My prediction is 4-5 years at $16.5m per year. People will be outraged, but he’s worth it. They don’t like him, we don’t care.