Nick Sirianni fired his DB coach after the Super Bowl. The Eagles stumbled. Can the new staff rebound?

The most egregious of the many mistakes Nick Sirianni made after the Super Bowl season of 2022 was not replacing offensive coordinator Shane Steichen with in-house quarterbacks coach Brian Johnson, or even replacing defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon with the DC Sean Desai and adviser-turned-DC Matt Patricia.

It was firing defensive backs coach Dennard Wilson.

In 2022, Wilson’s unit with the Eagles ranked No. 1 against the pass (179.8 yards per game), ranked third in opposing quarterback rating (81.6), tied for fourth with 17 interceptions, and, playing suffocating coverage, helped the defense finish first, with 70 sacks. James Bradberry was a second-team All-Pro.

Ravens coach John Harbaugh hired Wilson the day after Sirianni fired him.

Last year, the Ravens defense allowed the fewest points in the league (16.5 per game), ranked sixth in pass defense (191.9 yards per game), tied for third in interceptions (18), and again helped the defense finish first, with 60 sacks. He turned second-year safety Kyle Hamilton into a first-team All-Pro.

In January, the Titans hired Wilson to be their defensive coordinator.

» READ MORE: Nick Sirianni courts mutiny by firing DB coach Dennard Wilson after snubbing him as Eagles DC

Last year, the Eagles finished second-to-last in pass defense, third-to-last in points allowed per game, and tied for fourth-from-last in interceptions. The defense had just 43 sacks.

Now, two years later, after a catastrophic season from their defensive backfield, the Eagles have Kellen Moore running the offense, Vic Fangio running the defense, and a new, three-headed cast of backfield coaches: DB coach Christian Parker, cornerbacks coach Roy Anderson, and safeties coach Joe Kasper.

They are the key to the season.

That’s because, no matter how many points Moore’s offense produces and no matter how well Fangio’s front-seven defenders penetrate the 10 yards behind the line of scrimmage or protect the 5 yards in front of it, none of it will matter if the DBs can’t cover.

That’s why the Birds allotted more resources to this unit than any other. They used a first-round pick on cornerback Quinyon Mitchell. They traded up in the second round to land corner (and possibly future safety) Cooper DeJean. They signed safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson to a three-year, $33 million contract. They used a spot to stash corner Isaiah Rodgers, who was suspended in 2023 for gambling violations. They even retained Bradberry, the worst corner in the league last year, and converted him to safety at the age of 31 instead of cutting him.

Bradberry might not help much — he wasn’t impressive in the preseason, and he’ll be on injured reserve for about half the season — but Eagles GM Howie Roseman doesn’t want to be left shorthanded for a second season.

“Big offseason priority for us,” Roseman admitted last week. “I feel like I needed to take responsibility for not putting the coaches in a good enough spot in our defensive backfield last year and didn’t want to have it happen again.”

A cascade of injury and ineptness played a large role in the Eagles’ collapse from 10-1 to 11-7.

» READ MORE: At a crossroads, Eagles coach Nick Sirianni turned to Jay Wright, Dawn Staley, and others for advice

Bradberry faded. Journeyman safety Justin Evans lasted four games before he got hurt. Darius Slay missed the last four regular-season games with a knee injury. Nickel corner and part-time safety Avonte Maddox missed 13 games.

Perhaps no coaching staff would succeed facing that degree of attrition, but DB coach D.K. McDonald, nickel backs coach Ronell Williams, and assistant DB coach Taver Johnson certainly did not. McDonald landed at Kansas as an assistant. Johnson is a defensive analyst at the University of Tennessee. Williams remained on the Eagles’ staff as an assistant linebackers coach. The job they were asked to do was, in hindsight, unfair, considering the man they succeeded.

To review:

After Sirianni decided not to promote Wilson to DC, according to NFL sources, Sirianni believed Wilson would be a disruptive, if not subversive presence on the team.

Slay disagreed.

“I think he would have made a lot of difference,” Slay told me after the season. “He was loved by us. I thought, for sure, he should have stayed.” As the defensive coordinator or the defensive backs coach? “It would have been better, regardless. Either way.”

Instead, Sirianni promoted McDonald from assistant DB coach. He hired Johnson out of Eastern Michigan; he’d had just three years’ experience coaching defense in the NFL. Williams had been a quality-control coach for five years with the Bears.

They failed.

This year’s coaches have a better pedigree, even if their results last season weren’t much better than the Eagles’.

Parker coached the Broncos’ secondary the last three seasons, the first season with Fangio as his head coach. Anderson coached the Seahawks’ DBs in 2023 and the Vikings’ safeties the three seasons before. Kasper was an Eagles quality-control coach in 2021 and 2022, then followed Fangio — a defensive adviser to the Eagles in 2022 — to Miami in 2023, where Fangio was DC and Kasper coached safeties.

Fangio’s fingerprints are all over the DB staff.

“Christian Parker is so highly respected around the league. I don’t know if you had asked a bunch of people around the league when I was [32], people would have been going, ‘Who’s that?’” Sirianni said. “Obviously, Vic had worked with him, and he’s been as advertised.”

Maddox agrees — and he knows coaching. He’s been asked to play nickel corner, outside corner, and safety by five different coordinators as he enters his seventh Eagles season.

“CP is a great addition. He’s doing a great job with us,” Maddox said. “When you have a lot of injuries, that sets you back. … There’s not too much different. Just different voices, different faces.”

There are lots of different sets of ears, too, and the most significant belong to Mitchell and DeJean. Mitchell will play both nickel and outside corner as a rookie. DeJean might be asked to play both, as well as safety, before the season’s over.

» READ MORE: Can Jahan Dotson be the next Nelson Agholor for the all-in Eagles?

“It’s been impressive, them learning multiple spots. What I like about them is they ask a lot of questions,” Maddox said. The coaches have quick, simple answers: “The communication has been good.”

Most of the micro-answers come from Anderson and Kasper.

“I’d worked with Joe Kasper before, and had so much respect for him,” Sirianni said. “When we got Vic back, and had a chance to get Joe back, that was a no-brainer.”

Kasper was on the Super Bowl staff that helped Gardner-Johnson lead the league with six interceptions.

Anderson coached Seahawks rookie Devon Witherspoon to a Pro Bowl spot last year, and the Birds are hoping he can make Mitchell just as good, just as fast. Anderson was an assistant in 2017-18 when Fangio was DC in Chicago, and Harbaugh loved Anderson after inheriting him as an assistant when Harbaugh got the Baltimore job in 2008.

All of the recommendations and connections mean nothing until the season starts and the coaches really have to coach.

“You don’t know it completely until they get in the building,” Sirianni said. “They’ve done a phenomenal job.”

Have they?

The season begins Friday in Brazil against the Packers’ topflight offense.

Phenomenal job?

We’ll see.