The Eagles have coaches to hire. How much power will Nick Sirianni have to make decisions?

Sirianni is more assertive than Doug Pederson was. So it will be interesting to keep an eye on his relationships with Jeffrey Lurie and Howie Roseman.

Eagles executive vice president Howie Roseman and coach Nick Sirianni speaking with reporters Tuesday at the NovaCare Complex.Read moreMonica Herndon / Staff Photographer

by Mike Sielski | Columnist

Published Feb. 21, 2023, 11:01 a.m. ET

It took less than 24 hours following the Eagles’ loss in Super Bowl LVII for Nick Sirianni to find himself presented with the same choices and conundrums that contributed to his predecessor’s departure. Shane Steichen left for the Indianapolis Colts. Jonathan Gannon stayed in Arizona to take over the Cardinals. Two coordinators gone, two hires or promotions for the Eagles to make, and now we’ll see just how different Sirianni and Doug Pederson are — and just how differently the Eagles’ leadership deals with one compared to the other.

That leadership team, of course, is chairman Jeffrey Lurie and executive vice president Howie Roseman, and their relationships with the Eagles’ recent head coaches have tended to follow a particular pattern: the highest of public praise followed by the most abrupt of exits. Chip Kelly was a genius and innovator until he was snubbing the wrong people, rubbing everyone else the wrong way, and overseeing a stagnant offense. Pederson was three years removed from being the bold, emotionally intelligent leader of a championship team when he and the Eagles parted ways.

Now Sirianni is coming off a Super Bowl berth in just his second season, wielding some power and, maybe most importantly, an assertiveness that Pederson lacked. Lurie and Roseman like to tout the collaborative nature of the Eagles’ decision-making process, and that collaboration is always easier in the aftermath of a lengthy postseason run. It also, with Lurie and Roseman, has tended to have an expiration date, and in light of this first set of changes to Sirianni’s coaching staff, it’s worth keeping an eye on how much influence and say-so Sirianni has and how much he can retain over time.

Remember: It wasn’t long ago that a power struggle led to the head coaching opening that Sirianni eventually filled. After the 2019 season, Pederson wanted to keep offensive coordinator Mike Groh and wide receivers coach Carson Walch. But Lurie wanted them out, so out they went. And a year later, Pederson went, too, in large part because he could no longer abide having such little control over who his assistants would be.

It was understandable for Pederson to think that Lurie and Roseman, even as his bosses, might defer to him some when it came to choosing his staff. After all, he was the first Eagles coach to win an NFL championship in 58 years. He was King of the Philly Special. He wrote an autobiography, Fearless, that was published six months after Super Bowl LII. When offensive coordinator Frank Reich and quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo left for other jobs, Groh and Press Taylor, both already on Pederson’s staff, moved up to replace them. It was all so seamless, and it would be as long as the Eagles were winning.

Except they were a little bit worse in 2018, and a little bit worse than that in 2019. And by the time the bottom started falling out in 2020, Pederson had lost whatever leverage he possessed, and Lurie and Roseman had received the implicit message that he had sent through his naturally agreeable personality: He would go along. He would get along. They would do what they thought best to improve the team, and he wouldn’t stand in their way.

Sirianni isn’t wired like Pederson. He is more emotional, more demonstrative, more inclined to speak his mind, more inclined to push back. Those qualities, in and of themselves, will make it harder for Roseman to take him on if they come into any disagreement or conflict, and already he has shown a measure of forcefulness that would have been surprising from Pederson. In a media availability Tuesday, he made it clear that he’d be happy to have Brian Johnson — the Eagles’ quarterbacks coach, a friend and mentor to Jalen Hurts since Hurts was a child — become the team’s offensive coordinator.

“Brian’s great with not just Jalen — with everybody,” Sirianni said. “He can adapt and just be able to connect with anybody on our roster, and that’s offensively and defensively. And then we’re not even talking about the football knowledge that he has. Brian’s excellent with Jalen as far as his development of fundamentals. I think you’ve heard me say this plenty of times.

“Brian is also very gifted in the sense of helping be able to scheme. Even though he wasn’t the offensive coordinator last year, he still helps a great deal with our schemes and the way we’re attacking defenses.”

As for replacing Gannon, Sirianni said: “It’s all going to look a little bit different, no matter if you bring Jonathan’s twin brother in, which he doesn’t have. If you brought him in, it’s still going to look a little different when that guy calls it as opposed to Coach Gannon. So there’s going to be little changes, little differences. But, again, I guess my long way of answering that is I’m not opposed to changing. I’m going to do what’s best for the Eagles.”

Read that paragraph again. Sirianni doesn’t use the word We in it. He uses the word I. A subtle thing, but a significant thing. Yes, this dynamic will be worth watching, now and for a while.