Eagles veterans: Nick Sirianni played favorites, as Jalen Hurts and A.J. Brown were treated ‘different’

Nick Sirianni and Howie Roseman will be available to the press Tuesday at the NFL scouting combine. It’s safe to say that few of the questions they field will concern the draft value of legacy linebacker Jeremiah Trotter Jr.

From locker-room dissension to coaching malpractice to sideline shenanigans, the further removed from the late-season disaster the Eagles get, the more issues surface regarding the collapse.

Add this one to the list:

Sirianni and his staff played favorites. If you were a second-tier player or a recent addition, as the team staggered to its 1-6 finish, Sirianni and his assistants targeted you. But if you were Jalen Hurts, A.J. Brown, or one of the legacy stars, your miscues went unmentioned or were excused.

» READ MORE: Sielski: If Nick Sirianni wants to save his career as the Eagles’ coach, he needs to learn to calm down

This information was offered unsolicited. I was asking an entirely different question.

When asked if Brown’s on-field conniptions and his two-week media blackout were affecting the team, an accomplished veteran player replied:

“I don’t know about that. But I will say it doesn’t help when they treat guys two different ways.”

With that, he nodded at Hurts’ empty locker.

What about Brown?

“Yeah. I guess some guys can’t do anything wrong.”

The veteran told me this after the Eagles lost at home to the Cardinals on New Year’s Eve, and I was asked to keep it strictly off the record. However, as the discourse surrounding the Eagles’ collapse mushroomed into an apocalyptic event, the veteran this weekend said his assertion could be used, although without attribution. When contacted, another veteran not only supported the accusation, but also expanded.

If you were an offensive lineman — Jordan Mailata, Cam Jurgens, or Landon Dickerson — you got treated differently than if you were Jason Kelce or Lane Johnson. And heaven forbid you were a young defensive lineman, like Jordan Davis or Jalen Carter, who could do no right in the last two months, as opposed to Fletcher Cox or Brandon Graham, the former of whom disappeared in the latter part of the season and the latter of whom didn’t show up in the former part of the season.

At the time, this sounded like standard bellyaching from the proletariat — players unwilling to recognize the unspoken entitlement of $255 million quarterbacks and future Hall of Fame players. Now, though, as reports surface about deeper locker-room malignancy, these complaints, if not the root of the collapse, might at least have contributed to it.

» READ MORE: A.J. Brown said a lot Friday on WIP. Here’s what he got right and what he got wrong.

This is no indictment of Hurts, or Brown, or any Eagles player, really. Rather, it’s an indictment of Sirianni and his inability to control his team as a third-year coach who’d lost both coordinators to head coaching jobs with other teams.

It’s an indictment of first-year offensive coordinator Brian Johnson. He is a longtime family friend of Hurts’ and was his quarterbacks coach for two years with the Eagles but, when promoted last year, players said Johnson became reluctant to hold Hurts accountable. Johnson also, according to players, was intimidated by Brown.

It’s an indictment of Sean Desai, the first-year defensive coordinator who was demoted after 13 games in favor of Matt Patricia, neither of whom was able to get much out of Carter and Davis after November. It’s also an indictment of defensive line coach Tracy Rocker, who’d done such a good job in 2022 as the Eagles reached the Super Bowl.

Johnson, Desai, Patricia, and Rocker won’t return to with the team next season. However, Sirianni and most of the principal players will return. How they handle the fallout of 2023 likely will determine their long-term futures, both with the Eagles and in the NFL.

It’s astonishing how the Eagles devolved. Just after Thanksgiving they were a team that, from the beginning of the 2022 season, had won 26 of 31 games with a Super Bowl appearance and a likely second straight No. 1 seed.

Now, they’re a sordid little soap opera.

After a few wild incidents — a player beefed on social media with a fan during halftime of a game he was playing in and Sirianni mocked Chiefs fans on camera in the tunnel as he victoriously exited Arrowhead Stadium — the craziest thing that happened all season happened.

» READ MORE: Inside the makeup of Jalen Hurts: Overly stoic leader or just quiet and misunderstood?

News broke Dec. 17 that Desai was being stripped of his leadership duties in favor of Patricia, who’d been lurking all year as a “senior defensive assistant.” Patricia debuted in an upset loss in Seattle on Dec. 18, after which a former NFL executive told me the Eagles were seen as a “clown show” throughout the league.

The circus only got wilder.

Brown, the team’s best player and, usually, a wise and willing spokesman, refused to speak to the press after the Eagles’ next two games. Brown had been visibly upset on the sideline and on the field. Sources told me he was, perhaps understandably, mad at the play-calling. After Brown’s second postgame blow-off, another accomplished veteran also told me that Brown’s body language was setting an unacceptable example for younger players.

After that news broke, Brown addressed the team and later had a news conference. He apologized to teammates for being a distraction, and later told the press that he didn’t have problems with the play-calling. However, with no apparent self-awareness, Brown dropped this bombshell: He and Hurts “improvised” and ignored the final play called two weeks earlier in Seattle. Instead, they called their own play, which resulted in a clinching interception by Hurts.

» READ MORE: A.J. Brown’s ‘we improvised’ revelation unearths bigger questions about the state of the Eagles

According to the veterans with whom I spoke for this column, neither Brown nor Hurts was reprimanded for this action. Which makes sense, if you recall the fallout of Brown’s confession: Incredibly, Sirianni not only defended their initiative, he also painted a picture in which Hurts and, apparently, Brown, are allowed to call their own shots as much as they like:

“He has total freedom to do what he needs to do to make a play,” Sirianni said.

Then the Eagles lost the NFC East title to the Cowboys and, for the second time in three years, the host Buccaneers destroyed them in a wild-card playoff game. As you might expect, things did not quiet down.

Fox Sports host Craig Carton last week said that he knew the Eagles’ locker room issues and that he considered them irreparable, but has not since elaborated.

Derrick Gunn, a well-connected former Eagles reporter, then tweeted that the Eagles’ issues included these:

First Hurts’ new contract distracted him. Which makes sense.

Second, after an altercation with a 49ers player got him banned from the field, the absence of security chief Dom DiSandro left the combustible Sirianni with no shepherd. Without Big Dom on his hip, Sirianni often argued and berated players and coaches during games. Which, if true, is beyond wild.

In the midst of it all, talk radio pundits began to ask if Brown might be happier on another team, away from Hurts and the coaching staff. Brown seemed to take offense to this. He deleted Eagles affiliations from his social media profiles. Late last month, on the Up & Adams Show on YouTube, Brown declined to say that he didn’t want to be traded.

Last week, a Twitter/X account associated with Brown posted a comment critical of Philadelphia media, and, while Brown on Instagram denied posting it himself, he did seem to agree with it. At any rate, Brown took it upon himself Friday to call into the 94-WIP afternoon show to try and address his personal dramas. He mostly failed: To wit, he refused to describe his relationship with Hurts, though he did say he did not want to be traded.

Hell, why would he want to leave?

Apparently, for Sirianni, Brown and the top-tier players can do no wrong.