F-bomb fireworks: Nick Sirianni scorches players, grows up on the Eagles sideline, right before our eyes

Nick Sirianni is finally the adult in the room.

For the first time since he was hired in 2021, Sirianni publicly embarrassed players on the sideline. It happened against the Giants in Lincoln Financial Field on Monday evening in prime time.

It’s about damn time.

He’s been his players’ pal and their big bro and their confidant. He’s been their gardener, and he’s shoveled a lot of fertilizer. That’s over. His soft-touch style has worked worse and worse as we’ve progressed.

For the first time since he was hired in 2021, Sirianni held players accountable in the moment, and they were significant players: Jalen Carter, their first-round pick and a rising star at defensive tackle; Haason Reddick, their best pass rusher these past two seasons; and DeVonta Smith, the stiletto to A.J. Brown’s broad sword as they’ve become the best weapons in Eagles history.

The big dustup happened late in the game. The Giants faced fourth-and-8 at the Eagles’ 46-yard line with 26 seconds to play, trailing by eight points, with no timeouts and the clock stopped. Sirianni called a timeout after seeing the Giants’ formation and to give his troops a rest. Reddick appeared to disagree with that strategy and charged over to the sideline, arms raised. Sirianni told him several times to get back on the field.

Nick, who ain’t no saint, then allowed himself a few colorful words directed to linebackers coach Jeremiah Washburn.

Then, weirdly, Smith — a wide receiver — stepped forward and offered his opinion on defensive strategy, a team source told The Inquirer. Sirianni did not appreciate Smith’s input and told him so. Brown strolled over at the end of the discussion, scowling. So did Carter ... and with good reason.

» READ MORE: Eagles won, but Nick Sirianni’s sideline eruptions and the locker room tenor still suggest a team that is tense

Carter took too long to exit the field as the Giants prepared to punt in the first half, which resulted in a penalty for having too many men on the field. Sirianni went ballistic. The miscue gave the Giants about five minutes of possession, but that’s only because they declined to kick a field goal later in the drive and were stopped on fourth down. Carter played little for the rest of the game. Sirianni said that was coincidental, but Carter was in on just 33% of the defensive snaps, his lowest usage rate in any game he finished uninjured.

Don’t think this explosion won’t have a lasting effect. It should.

An NFL head coach needs to be a hard-ass marshal like Matt Dillon, not a milquetoast sheriff like Andy Griffith. He has to be the bad cop. You want good cops? That’s what assistant coaches are for. You go whine to them.

And so, for the first time since Sirianni was hired in 2021, the locker room felt a little pouty, a little tense, and this was after a win. There was a marked undercurrent of discontent that the players tried to pass off as dissatisfaction with sloppy play — turnovers, penalties, etc. — but, really, it was four dozen men who were stunned by the suddenly harsh Sirianni sideline demeanor.

» READ MORE: Eagles-Giants takeaways: Birds’ struggles no longer appear to be ‘uncharacteristic.’ Still, there’s time to fix it.

“I get animated a lot,” Sirianni said Monday night.

True. He yells at the officials and the other team’s coaches and sometimes even the other team’s fans, but he’s never acted like this toward his own players.

And he knows it.

“There were moments in that game [Monday] where I felt like I was too tense on the sideline,” Sirianni said Tuesday. “I need to be better about that.”

No. Monday night was long overdue.

At any rate, for the first time since he was hired in 2021, there seems to be a clear separation between Sirianni and his players. Head football coaches need to be bullies, not buddies. As his team made mistake after mistake, and as it allowed an inferior Giants team a chance to win a football game that should’ve been over an hour before, Sirianni finally acted like the adult in the room.

It’s fine to have high emotional intelligence, but it’s also fine to have a low tolerance for players who play with low actual intelligence.

In short, Sirianni acted like an angry father who had enough of his kids’ crap. In front of everybody, he put them in their place, as he should. As he should have weeks and weeks ago.

We often forget how little experience Sirianni brings to this job. He’s knowledgeable, but he’s never led men. He’s never even led boys. He’s never been a head coach of anything. The difference between being a head coach and being an assistant coach is the difference between being president and being a cabinet member.

We also forget that being a head coach in any era is a challenge, but a head coach of a herd of millennials and Gen-Zs must be maddening. As you might expect, most of the players who’d been embarrassed avoided conflict and accountability afterward.

» READ MORE: Nick Sirianni feels he was ‘too tense’ on the sideline. Are the Eagles still having fun when they win?

Reddick refused to talk after the game. So did Carter. So did Brown, so there might be something there, too.

Smith talked after the game, but then, Sirianni apparently gave him a hug. Seriously. It clearly didn’t fix everything. He’d caught four passes for 79 yards and a touchdown and went over 1,000 yards for the second time in his career, and his team had broken a three-game losing streak, regained first place in the NFC East, and had a shot to regain the No. 1 overall seed ... but Smith was the least-happy winning player who had just eclipsed another big milestone I’ve ever been in front of.

With grimaces and with frowns, he claimed his malaise lay in the team’s relative inability to execute as crisply as he’d have liked. He acted like a guy whose mom put him in timeout over by the monkey bars while the other kids kept on playing.

And that’s good.

We can all agree that, if anything, Sirianni needs to use his timeouts better.