Nick Sirianni has been defiant since that awful Eagles loss. If he’s not careful, it could cost him his job.

Once the jittery embarrassment of his opening news conference had subsided, once he got comfortable with being an NFL head coach and got his team to a Super Bowl in his second season, Nick Sirianni was never going to go down quietly.

Much of his tenure with the Eagles has been an exercise in quelling his emotions, in learning the delicate dance of being diplomatic. His instinct is to yell and react and sometimes even taunt, to speak his mind, to stand up for his people and most vehemently for himself. And in the aftermath of the Eagles’ awful 22-21 loss Monday night to the Atlanta Falcons, he has shown a combination of defensiveness and defiance that suggests he’s willing to put himself in conflict with the people who pay his salary. With Jeffrey Lurie. With Howie Roseman. With an Eagles leadership that has made it clear for years that it wants its head coach thinking for himself only so much.

» READ MORE: Late-game decision making in the Eagles’ loss to the Falcons turned up the heat on Nick Sirianni

From his postgame press conference Monday night to his meeting with media members Wednesday afternoon, Sirianni has dropped sign after sign that his tenuous job status won’t stop him from doing what he thinks is best for the Eagles. He might be wrong in those thoughts. Against the Falcons, he was wrong. But he hasn’t slunk into a corner or pleaded for forgiveness or even expressed regret about another Eagles collapse on his watch, another win that got away. Instead, he has puffed his chest and insisted he was right, and you have to admire his audacity, if not his management of the closing minutes of that Atlanta loss.

The most memorable and consequential sequence from the game, of course — the source of so much of the angst and anger that has followed — came late in the fourth quarter. There was the decision to call a pass play on third-and-3 from the Falcons’ 10-yard line with 1 minute, 46 seconds left, with the Eagles’ up 18-15, and with Atlanta out of timeouts. There was Saquon Barkley’s costly drop. There was Sirianni’s decision to have Jake Elliott kick a field goal on fourth down, which put the Eagles up six but gave the Falcons more time to drive for the winning touchdown, which they did.

It was second-guessing all the way down: Why throw on third down when time was of the essence and an incompletion would stop the clock? Why not run the ball twice and at worst pin the Falcons inside their own 10? Why not go for it on fourth down, especially when the acceptance of such risk has been a defining characteristic of the Eagles’ identity for years?

» READ MORE: The Eagles ran the ball the way they had to on Monday ... until they didn’t on the game’s most pivotal play

“My conviction in the moment was [that] I knew exactly what I wanted,” Sirianni said Wednesday. “Again, is the outcome always what you want? No, but … I was completely convinced that kicking the field goal there was the right decision based on all my studies. Now, I come back, and I reevaluate it, and I’m even more convicted, to be quite honest with you, just because of everything that goes into that.”

This is dangerous territory for Sirianni, and it was inevitable that he would end up here. Everyone knows Lurie and Roseman regard devotion to analytics and aggressiveness on offense as two of their core strategic principles, and a head coach who deviates from them, who sees himself as more than just a cog in the organization’s machinery, does so at his peril. Chip Kelly and Doug Pederson’s tenures ended as soon as, in Lurie’s mind, each coach had outgrown his britches.

Sirianni, though, isn’t wired to defer. It’s not in him. It’s not who he is. Even if Vic Fangio’s defense had kept Kirk Cousins and Co. out of the end zone, even if the Eagles were 2-0 right now, Sirianni likely still would have to answer to Lurie for settling for that late field goal, and he still would be insisting it was the prudent and smart decision, and the same dynamic still would be in place. The Eagles always go one way, and Sirianni didn’t just go the other — he was happy to explain why.

We can re-litigate those final minutes against the Falcons until either the cows come home or Bryce Huff gets within 10 feet of an opposing quarterback, whichever happens first. But with respect to Sirianni and his future here, the more interesting and relevant development was his answer Monday night when he was asked whether he or Kellen Moore was calling the plays:

“Kellen is the offensive coordinator that makes the calls, yeah, if you’re trying to stir that up,” he said. “I’m the head coach.”

Hmmm. Curious. Last season, whenever he was pressed to explain a big mistake or bad outcome, Sirianni would accept all the responsibility. It was his fault and no one else’s, at least publicly. The best example of this approach was the Eagles’ Dec. 18 loss to the Seahawks in Seattle, when Jalen Hurts and A.J. Brown, in a bit of reckless improvisation, tried a deep pass play that led to a game-ending interception. Sirianni took the blame for their actions, and only later did Brown reveal that he and Hurts had gone rogue and that he respected Sirianni for not driving a metaphorical jitney over his players.

Now, after an offseason in which a stew of reporting, rumors, and speculation left little doubt that Sirianni’s job had been in jeopardy, after the Eagles had stripped him of plenty of his power and brought in Moore to oversee the offense, things had gone bad again, but something was different: Sirianni had mentioned someone else’s name first. It was worth following up on the whole thing.

» READ MORE: Saquon Barkley can make running backs glamorous again. And win the Eagles some games in the process.

“Everything that we do has my name on it,” Sirianni said Wednesday minutes after his midweek press conference. “I mean, I think it was known last year that I was more involved.”

OK, but last year, you took the bullets for Jalen and A.J.

“And I’m still going to do that,” he said.

But you didn’t this time, with Kellen.

“I don’t think that’s fair,” he said. “Kellen in that scenario was like, ‘What are we going to do?’ We were talking about it. He suggested the play. I said, ‘Yes, I love that.’ The reason I didn’t say, ‘I got that one’ is that it was a great play call. I don’t want to be like, ‘I made the perfect play call.’ We had a timeout right before it, and he said, ‘This play,’ and I was like, ‘Yes, I love that call!’”

Standing nearby, Eagles spokesman Bob Lange piped up: “He wasn’t assigning blame.”

Fair enough. But it’s safe to say that he was asserting himself ... and that it wasn’t the first time and won’t be the last. Say what you will about Nick Sirianni: If he goes down, he will go down doing things his way, and he can live with that. A few more results like Monday’s, and he’ll get his wish.