Nick Sirianni’s first season with the Eagles will be rough. So use the right standard to judge him. | Mike Sielski

Jeffrey Lurie has hired five head coaches for the Eagles. To set a baseline of expectations for the fifth of them, Nick Sirianni, let’s consider the second of them, Andy Reid.

Back in 1999 and 2000, when Philadelphia was still deciding how it felt and what it thought about Reid, he received an enthusiastic endorsement from a source of stature and respect. If you stopped in John Chaney’s hole-in-the-street office at Temple then and for a few years thereafter, you didn’t even have to ask him for his insight into the man who held the most prominent and scrutinized coaching job in the city. As with most things, Chaney would offer his opinions without any solicitation, and Reid’s early tenure with the Eagles was among his favorite topics.

The giveaway, to Chaney, that Reid was an excellent coach was the manner in which the Eagles played for him in 1999, his first season – particularly the way they finished that season. They had gone 3-13 the previous year, under Ray Rhodes, and everyone knew they’d be lousy again in 1999. But they had a defense that was already solid and was still improving, and they had Donovan McNabb to develop, and the players gave Reid all they had all season, winning their final two games to finish 5-11. A strong ending can be a promising harbinger, or it can be a mirage. Chaney saw this one as the former, and he was right.

“Any time you can get guys to go out and play football – after they had lost and lost – to go win games at the end, that means you have character people,” he said in December 2000, as the Eagles were completing an 11-5 season. “Now they are winning this year, but they really won last year.”

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The situation that Sirianni faces now isn’t so different from the one Reid faced then. No one expects the Eagles to be anything other than a bottom feeder in what was the NFL’s worst division last year. Unless Howie Roseman and his scouts draft a group of players deeper and richer in talent and more prepared for the rigors of pro football than any group they have before, the Eagles are going to be pretty bad. There’s really no way around it. So judging Sirianni, in his first season anyway, based on his win-loss record seems both a fool’s errand and unfair.

At the moment, this is a team with major shortcomings in the secondary, at linebacker, at wide receiver, and – depending on the health of a couple of its most experienced and important players at the position – along the offensive line. At the moment, this is a team, as Sirianni himself pointed out Thursday, with just one quarterback on its roster. A mad scientist could splice the genes of Vince Lombardi, Bill Walsh, and Bill Belichick and grow the perfect football coach in a petri dish, and that creation probably wouldn’t lead the 2021 Eagles to more than four or five victories.

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How best to judge Sirianni, then? By observing his competence or lack thereof through the Eagles’ progress or lack thereof. Think about Reid’s first season. That Doug Pederson wasn’t cut out to be a true NFL starting quarterback and McNabb wasn’t ready yet to be one didn’t change the fact that the Eagles were better organized and better coached than they had been under Rhodes. As McNabb matured and as the Eagles acquired more talent, the gap between Reid and Rhodes further revealed itself.

Think about Pederson’s tenure as head coach. Early in his first season, you could see the intelligence behind the schemes and concepts that he and Frank Reich had introduced to the offense. Yes, Carson Wentz was throwing the ball to Dorial Green-Beckham and Josh Huff, and those personnel groupings weren’t ideal. But you could see the smarts underpinning the entire operation. And if you could count on one thing about about the Eagles during Pederson’s five years as their head coach, it was that his players did not quit on him (which is why his decision, assuming it was his decision, to pull Jalen Hurts in his final game was so jarring to them).

Now, will Sirianni lead the Eagles on an 11-year stretch in which they win five division championships and reach five NFC Championship Games? Will he lead them to a Super Bowl victory? Both are unlikely, but then, that’s the point. Reid wasn’t a sexy hire in 1999, and Pederson ended up surpassing most people’s expectations for him – including Lurie’s, if he were being honest. No one really knows what kind of coach Nick Sirianni will be yet. But given the hand he’s likely to be dealt, the proof of his coaching ability and acumen won’t be in the Eagles’ record. It won’t be in whether they’re good. It’ll be in whether they’re getting better.