New Eagles coach Nick Sirianni still needs to learn the facts of life with Philly media | Mike Sielski

At one point Friday afternoon, Nick Sirianni, the Eagles’ new head coach, was speaking about the mentors and coaches who had shaped him and his career, and he said, “You take the good. You take the bad,” which of course violated The First Rule of the Introductory Press Conference: If you start the theme song to The Facts of Life, you have to finish the theme song to The Facts of Life.

Sirianni’s unintentional invocation of that sitcom/earworm was the lightest moment in his otherwise jittery first formal interaction with the Philadelphia media. Granted, the circumstances of the interaction were unusual, even within the context of the pandemic and the need for social distancing. Sirianni stood by himself in a room at the NovaCare Complex and gazed into a computer screen, speaking to and answering questions from a Hollywood Squares-style array of faces. But then, that only raises a question that no one was able to ask Friday: Nick, if you’re this jumpy now, what happens when your interrogators are in the room with you?

And he was jumpy. I’m generally not a big believer that press conferences are of major importance when evaluating a coach or manager. But Sirianni was treading into Albert Brooks-in-Broadcast News territory with his cracking voice and repetitive, evasive responses. (Have we set the single-column record for 1980s pop-culture references yet? No? We’ll keep working at it.) It’s become a trendy cliche nowadays to talk about a new coach “winning the press conference.” Well, on Friday, the press conference was Mike Tyson, and Sirianni was Michael Spinks. (Told you.)

So, is Sirianni’s obvious nervousness Friday a big deal? Not necessarily. It stands to reason that he will grow more comfortable answering questions the more he does it, and the manner in which someone speaks publicly and the manner in which someone speaks to people individually are often wildly disparate. But there are a couple of caveats to that truth.

Part of an NFL coach’s job is to express confidence and competence publicly. It’s to be a face of a franchise – not necessarily the face, because a team owner or star quarterback often fills that role, but a face. No matter what you think of Andy Reid’s or Bill Belichick’s clipped answers to reporters, those two always maintain the veneer of control in an environment when, theoretically, they are surrendering a lot of it. They know what they could say or what the questioner might expect them to say, but they don’t say it, and they don’t stammer and sweat as they fend off those perfectly legitimate inquiries. It reaffirms the impression – or, in the case of those two guys, the reality – that they know what they’re doing, that they cut down or cut out completely those ever-present “distractions” that NFL coaches hate.

Interviewing each of them one-on-one or in more intimate, less formal settings, though, is a different story. John Powers, who spent four decades at The Boston Globe, wrote an entire book based on Belichick’s musings during his media availabilities on Fridays, when the contingent around The Hooded One is smaller and he feels freer to open up. And Reid has always been more open and forthcoming in private or without a horde around him. In fairness to Sirianni, when it comes to the ancient arts of deflecting questions and saying nothing of substance, Reid and Belichick are samurai. They’ve been at it a long time, much longer than a 39-year-old former offensive coordinator whose interactions with reporters, for the last 10 months, have been entirely through the window of his laptop screen and were nowhere near as grueling as Friday’s was.

But then, that’s why Sirianni’s performance in front of the press matters. Jeffrey Lurie delivered a monologue nearly 16 minutes in length before introducing Sirianni, then logged off Zoom before taking any questions. Howie Roseman did not participate in the availability at all. The two of them sent Sirianni out there alone, and it’s safe to say that he had been given strict instructions not to answer directly any questions related to the topic(s) in which everyone who follows the Eagles is most interested: Carson Wentz and/or Jalen Hurts. This is how the Eagles operate: They don’t have their head coach contribute much to the tasks of drafting players and building a roster, but they do have him answer for most of the resulting curiosity and confusion once they draft a backup quarterback in the second round. It’s a major aspect of his job, to explain away the mistakes and mess-ups of the people who hired him.

Friday could have been better in that regard. The Eagles went through a pretty lengthy process before settling on and introducing Sirianni, which means they had time to prepare him for his first exposure to a media market that is bigger, more engaged, and tougher than those he experienced in Indianapolis or San Diego. He still had a little trouble handling it. We’ll see how he does with everything else his new job entails, because when you’re an NFL head coach, especially when you’re the head coach of the Eagles, there are always moments when the world just never seems to be living up to your dreams.