Fire Nick? Hardly. Lurie thinks Sirianni is Andy Reid (lite) for the Eagles, NFL sources say

A few months ago, it seemed impossible that Nick Sirianni’s job was not in peril. He’d led a Super Bowl favorite down a disastrous path, from 10-1 to 11-7 and a wild-card road playoff loss. His $255 million quarterback had regressed. Bill Belichick was on the market.

Whether Sirianni would oversee a fourth Eagles training camp certainly seemed in peril.

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Camp starts Tuesday. Nick’s still here. Why?

Because Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie believes Sirianni can be the next Andy Reid. Or Bill Belichick. Maybe even Bill Walsh, or Don Shula.

Lurie hired Sirianni after firing overmatched Doug Pederson in 2021 after five roller-coaster seasons. Lurie wasn’t looking to hire a coach for the next five years. He was looking to hire one for the next 20. Lurie still believes Sirianni is that guy.

“Jeffrey thinks Nick is the real deal,” said a former Eagles executive in a recent conversation. You could feel the guy’s eyes roll over the phone. He was not alone in his incredulity.

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The general feeling among the NFL cognoscenti is that Lurie thinks Sirianni still has superb potential — as long as Sirianni can spend some time removed from the demands of developing an offense.

I agree with the concept, if not the candidate.

I think every great head coach should be able to coach both sides of the ball. Belichick, a brilliant defensive mind, was a center and tight end and coached tight ends, receivers, and special teams. Bill Parcells was drafted as an offensive lineman. Walsh, an offensive genius, played defensive end in college and coached defensive backs at Stanford.

The best can do it both ways. Can Sirianni? Lurie thinks so. His is a voice in the wilderness.

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The most entertaining aspect of NFL summers is that the gossipers get itchy. This summer, the big Eagles question — behind “How did the Giants let Saquon get to Philly?” — was, “How did Nick survive?” The answer, according to several NFL sources: Despite the 1-6 collapse, despite the second half of Super Bowl LVII, and despite all of Sirianni’s shenanigans on and off the field, Lurie believes that he has a diamond in the rough whose edges simply need more polish.

I had a hard time believing it, too, but this explains Lurie’s commitment to Sirianni in the face of waves of criticism and perceived dissatisfaction.

“The ingredients that I’ve always seen with Nick are very obvious: the ability to connect, the ability to be authentic, incredible work ethic, high football IQ,” Lurie said in March. “All the reasons that he was hired in the first place have been almost magnified in the first three years because they’ve been extremely successful.”

Sirianni is 35-20 in his three seasons, including playoffs. Reid began 32-24.

Lurie discovered Reid, now in Kansas City. He gave Reid the chance to become the three-time Super Bowl champion and future Hall of Fame coach he is today. Lurie sees much of Reid, and others, in Sirianni.

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Lurie loves history, and especially NFL history, particularly the era of football in which he grew up. He adores the construct of the NFL head coach — the idea of it: the CEO profile, the manager of people, the master of all facets of the game.

Lurie hired Reid because he saw in Reid not only Mike Holmgren, Reid’s boss in Green Bay and, at that moment, the hottest football mind on the planet, but also coaches like Walsh, Holmgren’s mentor. He saw in Reid a complete knowledge of the game and the industry, like Parcells and Shula.

He sees in Sirianni what he saw in Reid: a football nerd, a maniacal teacher, a passionate leader. He also sees in Sirianni the capacity to become an excellent administrator, a skill that took Reid more than a decade to master.

The similarities are obvious. Lurie hired Reid in 1999, when he was 41. Sirianni was 40 when he coached his first Eagles game. Reid had small children; so does Sirianni. Both were relatively anonymous as head-coaching candidates, until they weren’t, thanks to Lurie.

If your eyes are rolling, you’ve got to admit Lurie’s pretty good at this. He has two advanced degrees — a master’s in psychology and a doctorate in social policy — which makes him the Mensa member of an NFL old boys’ owners club filled with the likes of the failed pizza parlor guy in Dallas and Al Davis’ silver-spooned kid out in Vegas, Mark the Haircut.

Reid had championship DNA, Pederson won a Super Bowl, Sirianni went to a Super Bowl and has made the playoffs every year. Even Ray Rhodes and Chip Kelly won coach of the year awards.

Lurie believes in Sirianni; he just believes that Sirianni just needs more seasoning. Lurie and Roseman spent a ton of money hiring Sirianni experienced coordinators in Vic Fangio for the defense and Kellen Moore for the offense so Sirianni can be less a tactician and more an executive.

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Sirianni understands this and seems to have accepted it.

“I’m able to have kind of a broad view of everything, like a 30,000-foot view,” Sirianni said last month. “There’s nothing more I like than getting up in front of the team and being able to correct the tape at the end of the day, offense, defense, and special teams.”

Sure there is. He loves designing and calling plays more than that. But he gave up play-calling midseason three years ago, and the offense now belongs to Moore, so Sirianni’s left with this. And only this.

Consider the assistants he was handed.

If the Eagles win big and Jalen Hurts rebounds, Moore will be a head coach this time next year, ostensibly leaving a rebuilt offense and a rebuilt Hurts in his wake. The head-coaching door probably has closed for Fangio, a 65-year-old head-coaching failure who specializes in defense. But Fangio could spend the next five years as the vice-head coach in Philly, as Jim Johnson did for Reid for nine years in Philly and as Steve Spagnuolo has done for the last five years in K.C.

This is Lurie’s plan. He wants Sirianni and Hurts to be his Belichick and Brady, his Reid and Mahomes, his Walsh and Montana.

Lurie realizes that Sirianni stank at times last season, and he blames Nick as much as anyone for the humiliation, but he also believes that Sirianni is more than just salvageable, league sources said.

He thinks Sirianni is special.

As Sirianni kicks off Training Camp No. 4, that’s all that matters.