Jeff Lurie may have done it again.
Say what you want about reports of meddling in football operations or an obsession with passing the ball, but give credit where credit is due: Lurie knows how to pick head coaches. In nearly three-decade run as Eagles owner, every head coach hired by the franchise has made the playoffs within his first two seasons. Two went on to be Super Bowl champions. One is a top-10 coach of all time.
And perhaps Nick Sirianni will add to Lurie’s coach-hiring legacy with an out-of-nowhere NFL Coach of the Year trophy.
Is it a longshot? Of course. The award is Bill Belichick’s to lose in 2021. But it’s impossible not to watch the team the Eagles are becoming (especially on the offensive side of the ball) and be impressed with what Sirianni has done. Turning around this Eagles group (from a culture and on-field perspective) has been a big task. Doing it all in the middle of a season has made it all the more eye opening.
Related
Before we go any further, let’s quickly rewind to the middle of October. The Eagles were 2-5 after a loss to the Raiders. The team played sloppy football. Penalites were piling up.The pass-first offense wasn’t working. Jalen Hurts was struggling. Sirianni was talking about flowers and roots and a loss to the then winless Lions seemed plausible. I said (and wrote) that Sirianni looked like a one-and-done coach. Every fear about this hire that came out in Philadelphia during press conferences last offseason reached a boiling point. The Eagles looked like a sinking ship.
Since? Sirianni’s team is 5-2, and has posted a plus-65 point differential. The offense has averaged 29.2 points per game, and that includes one total dud against the Giants. Wins have come against (fringe) playoff contenders like the Saints and Broncos. Hurts has improved, playing some of his best football. Penalties have been curtailed. The team bounced back from a bad game. We saw a win (and the offense did not skip a beat) with a backup quarterback. Relsiency (in games and week to week) has been evident, including keeping focus during a strange scheduling change in Week 15 and bouncing back after a slow start vs. WFT.
But perhaps most encouraging has been Sirianni’s radical transformation as a play caller and offensive designer. The Eagles were one of the most pass-heavy teams in the NFL over the first seven weeks of the season. Since? This team has morphed into the 2018-2019 Baltimore Ravens, with Hurts playing the role of Lamar Jackson in a diversified, impossible-to-shutdown rushing attack.
Here are the Eagles rushing numbers over the last seven games:
Lions: 46 carries, 236 yards
Chargers: 39 carries, 176 yards
Broncos: 40 carries, 214 yards
Saints: 50 carries, 242 yards
Giants: 33 carries, 208 yards
Jets: 41 carries, 185 yards
WFT: 41 carries, 238 yards
We just watched the first seven-game stretch of 175-plus rushing yards by a team since the 1985 Chicago Bears. This is unprecedented for any team, let alone one that came into the season with the idea to throw the football.
Tuesday’s dominance over Washington occurred without both starting guards (Landon Dickerson and Jack Driscoll), both of whom started the year as backups. That means Sirianni and his staff got record-tying production with what basically amounts to multiple third-string lineman, and did it with varied looks and formations.
The 2021 season was about a lot of things, including Hurts’ development and re-setting a foundation that broke with this franchise in 2020. Hurts has clearly improved, and responds to Sirianni’s hard coaching. The team culture is on the rise. No one quit in mid-October, even after uncomfortable issues in Las Vegas. Sirianni’s tactics and personality resonate, even if skepticism has followed every word he said publicly since taking the job.
Three weeks still remain to evaluate the job Sirianni has done in Year 1 on the job, but this much is already clear: Lurie hired a good coach, and the franchise is back on the upswing. In four head-to-head games vs. other first-year head coaches, Sirianni’s team has outscored the Arthur Smith-Dan Campell-Brandon Staley-Robert Saleh quarter by a 133-to-57 margin. Sirianni might even push enough of the right buttons over the next month to get in the Coach of the Year conversation with Belichick by season’s end.
Not bad for a guy that looked lost just a few months ago.