Whatever Nick Sirianni’s future, the Eagles coach can take pride in his present

Lane Johnson said something the other day that is worth some reflection. It wasn’t necessarily the most brilliant or insightful observation that ever flowed from the lips of man. In fact, Johnson himself chuckled at the self-evidence of his response when somebody asked him to gauge the mood in the Eagles’ locker room compared to last postseason.

“Well,” the All-Pro right tackle said, “we’re not on a six-game losing streak, or whatever it was.”

Then, in a nod of acknowledgment to the legitimacy of the question, Johnson continued to speak.

“Momentum is definitely on our side this year,” he said. “I feel like we’re coming together more than probably what we did last year. The team was kind of in disarray, in a state of that, heading into the playoffs.”

Disarray is a powerful word. It is not often that you hear it uttered in an NFL locker room. That Johnson felt comfortable invoking it might be the greatest testament to how far the Eagles have come over these last five or six months.

Heading into Sunday’s NFC wild-card matchup with the Green Bay Packers, the second-seeded Eagles are such a picture of stability that you can forget how tenuous it all felt after last season’s playoff loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The anonymous reports about the quarterback’s unhappiness. The owner’s decision to let the head coach twist in the wind for a week before confirming that he would, in fact, remain as head coach. The dismissal of both coordinators. All of it presaged an offseason in which Jalen Hurts and Nick Sirianni looked and sounded like runaway trains, one heading east, the other west, bound to collide or run everybody off the rails.

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It’s funny how fast things change, how quickly memories erase themselves and reset. The Eagles were several weeks — maybe months — into the season before everyone seemed content to accept that Sirianni would at least serve out another full season. Now, here they are, in the playoffs for a fourth straight season, winners of 14 games for the second time in three years, their head coach with a career .706 regular-season winning percentage that ranks fifth all-time behind Guy Chamberlin, John Madden, Vince Lombardi, and George Allen. The quarterback has been a model citizen in words and deeds, the numbers far from MVP level, but also exactly what the Eagles need: a career-high 68.7 completion percentage, a career-high 103.7 quarterback rating, off-the-charts efficiency.

Things are good. Surprisingly good. So good that I can’t help but feel that we don’t give Sirianni enough credit for how good they are. Inertia and talent only take you so far in the NFL. It is hard to believe that a team can win 70% of its regular-season games over four seasons — with three different play-callers on offense and four on defense — with a head coach who brings negative value.

Throughout training camp and the regular season, Sirianni was constantly asked some version of the same question: What is it that you actually do here? Rarely did it seem to faze him. Now that those questions have subsided, he would have every right to throw the question back in our faces while gesturing at his record.

You guys wanted to know what I do here? This.

“From the first year to now, he’s kind of the same guy,” said wide receiver DeVonta Smith. “He preaches the same thing, the same details, being together and things like that, and I think that’s why we’re elevating the way that we are.”

Granted, that could change in a few days. There are few greater coaching sins than to go 14-3 and lose at home in the wild-card round. Andy Reid lasted as long as he did, not because his early-stage regular seasons looked like Sirianni’s, but because they never ended earlier than the NFC championship game. A coach accrues his political capital in the postseason. Thus far, the Eagles have one Super Bowl appearance and two one-and-dones. Maybe that report from ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler a week ago wasn’t so strange. Maybe folks around the league are right to wonder whether Sirianni would survive a playoff meltdown.

It won’t happen this week. I’m pretty confident in that. Jordan Love throws too often off his back foot. Cornerback Jaire Alexander is out. The Eagles are at home. This is more likely to be a blowout than a loss.

Next week? If the opponent is the Bucs or the Los Angeles Rams, it will be a tougher matchup than many believe. If it is the Minnesota Vikings, another championship game is in store. That’s my best guess, anyway.

» READ MORE: Packers, Bucs, Lions ... the road to the Super Bowl is much tougher than 2017 or 2022

As for Sirianni, I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t even know if I can sit here and tell you definitively what it should hold. Coaching in the NFL is an inherently transitory business. Last year at this time, Shane Steichen was so highly regarded a coach that folks wondered aloud whether he had been the brains of the operation during the Eagles’ run to the Super Bowl in 2022. The phenomenon was similar to the one encountered by Doug Pederson in the wake of Frank Reich’s departure after the Eagles won their first Lombardi Trophy in the 2017 season. Now, Steichen is squarely on the hot seat in Indianapolis, and Reich is no longer coaching. Things change fast, justly or otherwise.

I do know one thing. Wherever the Eagles end up going, Sirianni deserves plenty of credit for where they are right now. They are happy. They are healthy. They are confident.

They are in a state of array.