Two reasons the Eagles are a win away from the Super Bowl: otherworldly talent, and Nick Sirianni’s guiding hand

For a moment, it sounded as if Nick Sirianni was talking out of both sides of his mouth. Not that you could blame him. Barely an hour had passed since the 43-year-old head coach had clinched his second NFC championship berth in three seasons and, well, there was a lot to process.

The Eagles’ 28-22 win over the Los Angeles Rams at Lincoln Financial Field on Sunday felt less like a football game and more like a lifetime. Or, at least, a 10-episode season of prestige television.

The home team never trailed after the first quarter, but not for a lack of trying. In a driving second-half snow that left the field covered for most of the final two quarters, the Eagles alternated between sealing, unsealing, and resealing the victory. Not until Matthew Stafford and the Rams were 13 yards away from a game-winning touchdown did the Eagles salt away the thing for good.

In the end, talent prevailed. That’s usually the bottom line with this football team. The Eagles have an overwhelming amount of talent, at virtually every position. Rare is the game where those disparities do not express themselves in some consequential fashion.

» READ MORE: Jalen Carter and a talented roster save the Eagles against the Rams, give them a shot at the Super Bowl

Jalen Carter always ends up in the opponent’s backfield, as he did on the Rams’ last two offensive plays of the game, a sack of Stafford on third-and-2 from the Eagles’ 13-yard line and then a pressure that forced the veteran quarterback to throw wide of his target on fourth down.

Saquon Barkley always ends up in the opponent’s secondary, as he did on his 78-yard touchdown run that gave the Eagles a 28-15 lead with 4 minutes, 36 seconds remaining.

A.J. Brown always ends up beyond the first-down marker in a must-have moment, as he did on fourth-and-4 from the Rams’ 32-yard line with 8:55 left, extending an Eagles drive that would culminate in a 37-yard field goal by Jake Elliott.

» READ MORE: Eagles’ Jake Elliott was ready for the snow, still inconsistent, but hit clutch FGs: ‘It was like a hurricane situation’

There is no antidote for these things.

“We’ve got some special people in this building,” Sirianni said at the postgame podium. “Again, it’s not the best groups of individuals that win, it’s the best teams that win and we’ve got some special guys. [General manager Howie Roseman] did a great job getting these guys. I can’t say enough about Howie and the job he’s done. I find myself after every game just thanking him and Mr. [Jeffrey] Lurie for the resources they give us.”

The sentiment seems contradictory at first glance. While there is no “I” in team, the Eagles sure do have a lot of capital I’s, and it sure does seem to help. Yet those two things are not mutually exclusive. The Eagles’ competitive advantage is two-fold: 1) the sum of their individual parts is astounding, 2) the whole exceeds that sum.

I don’t think Sirianni was fishing for credit, but I do think he thinks he deserves more than he has been given. If he doesn’t think that, then he’s wrong. As good of a job as Roseman and his staff have done in assembling this otherworldly collection of talent, the Eagles would not be the team they are if left to their own devices. A roster does not self-govern its way to the doorstep of a second Super Bowl appearance in three seasons.

That the Eagles are here, a win away from a week in New Orleans and a date with the Buffalo Bills or Kansas City Chiefs on football’s biggest stage, is first and foremost a testament to the man whose one job is to ensure they get to where they are. However valid the offseason questions about Sirianni’s aptitude and his long-term future as Eagles coach, he has answered them. He may not be a master of play design like Andy Reid or Sean McVay, the latter of whom spent Sunday giving Vic Fangio’s defense one of its toughest tests of the season. Sirianni may not exude the gravitas of a Mike Tomlin or John Harbaugh. But the Eagles have now beaten McVay’s Rams, Tomlin’s Pittsburgh Steelers, and Harbaugh’s Baltimore Ravens, and they have done so in a fashion that is more grind than flash.

» READ MORE: Eagles’ Saquon Barkley screaming and sprinting in a winter wonderland and into the history book is a sight to see

In the Eagles locker room after the game, there was a sense amongst the players that the weather and field conditions had mostly served to level the playing field and left them facing the very real chance that an inferior team could walk out of their stadium with a win. Jalen Hurts’ ability to extend plays was limited first by the slick field and second by an apparent knee injury he suffered in the deteriorating second-half conditions. After starting cornerback Quinyon Mitchell left the game after injuring himself on a rare scramble by Stafford, the Rams consistently attacked his replacement, Isaiah Rodgers. Before Barkley’s 78-yard touchdown burst in the fourth quarter, he’d spent much of the second half spinning his tires. When Hurts was sacked in the end zone for a safety to cut the Eagles lead to 16-15 on the second-to-last play of the third quarter, the warning siren blared.

“Sometimes the issues, just like I said to the team this week, are just good plays from the opponent,” Sirianni said. “The further you get along in this, the more it’s going to be, ‘Hey, the opponent made a really good play and how do you embrace the adversity?’ I think our guys did a really good job.”

The Eagles are a team that has consistently embraced that adversity. They are more talented than everybody else, yes. But they also have the marks of a team whose strength is the collective. They do not beat themselves. When an opponent does, they capitalize, as they did on a couple of Rams fumbles, including Rodgers’ 40-yard return of a fumbled handoff that set up a crucial field goal. When they get punched in the mouth, they respond with a counter of their own.

Talent plays a role in all of that, sure. But somebody is responsible for leading that talent through a season, and for making sure it is stronger at the end than when it started. With Sirianni, the proof is in the pudding.