‘Gotta win Super Bowls’: On Andy Reid, Nick Sirianni, and Jeffrey Lurie’s ability to look into the hearts of Eagles coaches

PHOENIX — During his first NFL bye week as Eagles coach, Nick Sirianni took his wife, Brett, to New York City for an overnight jaunt. The team set them up at the Marriott Marquis near Times Square and with a concierge it has used for years.

George Ntim helped the Siriannis get tickets to a Broadway show, got them reservations for dinner, and he realized over the course of their conversations why the coach had time off during the season.

“And he goes, ‘Andy [Reid] always came here during the bye week,’” Sirianni recalled.

Sirianni knew of Reid’s remarkable record with an extra week to prepare — now at 28-4 — and a lightbulb went off.

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“I thought to myself, ‘Oh, Andy always did that,’’' Sirianni said to The Inquirer on Tuesday. “And it made me think that I should maybe check out what he was actually doing [with his team] during the bye week.”

Never shy about asking for advice, Sirianni enlisted team chief security officer Dom DiSandro to reach out to the Eagles’ winningest coach. And Reid, despite being in the middle of a game week for his Kansas City Chiefs, spent 15 minutes walking one of his successors through his typical bye week schedule.

“I thought that was very cool and I’m not sure I would do the same, to be quite honest with you,” Sirianni said. “I would do it for [defensive coordinator Jonathan] Gannon if he got a job because he lived it with me. But to do it for somebody he didn’t really know, I think that’s special.”

Fourteen months later, Reid and Sirianni will face off in Sunday’s Super Bowl LVII, pitting both coaches against former employers. Reid’s history with the Eagles, of course, is longer and more complicated than Sirianni’s four years as an assistant with the Chiefs.

He helmed Jeffrey Lurie’s team for 14 years, reaching the NFC championship five times and the title game once, but Reid fell short of delivering Philadelphia its first Lombardi Trophy. The separation would prove beneficial to both sides — so the narrative goes — with the Eagles winning Super Bowl LII in 2018 and the Chiefs two years later.

But now they meet, not only in a fascinating clash between stylistically different squads, but a matchup full of intriguing off-field plot lines that pit former colleagues, teammates, and brothers against each other.

And when the game begins in nearby Glendale, Ariz., civility will be forgotten until the final whistle.

“These moments and opportunities are so rare, come Sunday the gloves will come off,” Chiefs general manager and former Eagles scout Brett Veach said, “and both organizations will do whatever they have to do to win.”

But when a winner is decided, Sirianni and Reid will walk to the middle of State Farm Stadium, shake hands, and remain symbols of the Eagles’ success in hiring coaches over the last two decades. Lurie as the ultimate decider has been the constant in that cycle.

In each of Lurie’s five hires since he bought the team in 1994, the Eagles have qualified for the playoffs in the coach’s first or second season. While sustainability has been elusive for many teams in the salary cap era, only Reid was able to maintain that level for an extended period.

Lurie’s ownership has not been without its imperfections. But a second title in five years would bring him as close to the “gold standard” he was once derided for saying he wanted his Eagles to reach.

And the 71-year old’s emotional intelligence in entrusting his franchise often to the right coaches and fostering a collegial relationship between that fraternity has played a role in the Eagles’ consistency vs. other NFL operations.

“Jeffrey gave you every opportunity to be successful and that’s all you can ask for,” Reid said on Monday. “Everything doesn’t last forever. We all had our time there. And Jeffrey was very honest with us. I think we saw what Jeffrey saw. And sometimes change can be good and it can be good for the team and the coach.

“And the guys who have had an opportunity to leave have done a nice job. And when they were there they did a nice job. He’s got a unique feel for that.”

The Eagles’ process for hiring coaches has evolved over the years. There have been individuals who have identified the top candidates, and collective voices who have informed Lurie, but no other NFL owner has connected in as many choices over the last 28 years.

Asked for insight into his modus operandi, Lurie divulged little during Monday’s Opening Night.

“I’m not giving that one away,” he said. “It’s not that there is one special thing, but we take the time to really, really research it. Honestly, there’s eight or nine factors and I don’t want to discuss them.”

But with the last two hires, existing relationships with Reid and former offensive coordinator Frank Reich led the Eagles to Doug Pederson and Sirianni.

“I want to have as healthy a relationship with those I’m working closely with,” Lurie said. “And whether they’re still with us or not, we want our lives to cross in a healthy way. And, yeah, Andy was instrumental in advising us to hire Doug. Frank Reich was instrumental in raving about Nick Sirianni.

“It’s not the reason we hire coaches, but it’s important that those who you respect so much to hear from them.”

Reid’s final season in Philly seemed almost doomed from the start. Lurie had set a bar before the opener saying that another 8-8 season wouldn’t be enough to save the coach. But it was the heroin overdose of Reid’s son, Garrett, in Lehigh at training camp that cast a pall over the proceedings.

» READ MORE: 10 years ago, Garrett Reid’s death at training camp at Lehigh forever altered the Eagles

When it became clear that his days were numbered, Reid’s initial instinct was to fight for his job. “I built this thing,” he said at one point to a colleague. But the Eagles finished 4-12, with one less win than in his rebuilding first season, and the coach started mapping out an exit plan.

On Monday night, Tammy Reid joked, “They ran us out of town,” but her husband, for many reasons, had decided he, too, had enough.

“I think he realized that for his family a change of venue was probably the best,” Lurie said. “He was certainly confident in his ability to be an extremely successful coach again. I had that confidence in him, too. That’s what made it so hard.”

On Reid’s final day, Lurie brought him into the cafeteria in front of the entire organization and handed him a game ball. As awkward as the presentation might have been, it spoke to the owner’s fondness for the coach who helped bring his franchise into the upper echelon of the NFL.

The Chiefs, meanwhile, acted swiftly and Reid was the first of six coaches hired that offseason.

Some close to Reid advised him to take a year off. But he had seen coaching friends like Jon Gruden and Steve Mariucci take sabbaticals only to be denied re-entry into the club when they wanted back in.

Kansas City went to the playoffs in five of Reid’s first six seasons, but the inspired drafting of quarterback Patrick Mahomes has had the Chiefs in three of the last four Super Bowls. Lurie was in Miami when Reid finally, in his 21st season as a head coach, hoisted the Lombardi.

“I think I cried,” he said.

Lurie and Reid embraced on the field afterward.

“We had this look like, ‘I know. We tried to do this together for so long,’’” Lurie said. “We were so close in all those championship games and now, ‘Andy, go get it. Go get it.’”

Lurie made his share of neophyte mistakes early in his tenure. While his initial hire Ray Rhodes took the Eagles to the postseason in his first two years, he had flamed out by his fourth and the franchise finished with its worst record (3-13) in over two decades.

The ensuing coaching search was criticized as it stretched on, but then-team president Joe Banner pushed for the relatively-unknown Reid and Lurie eventually made his choice. Banner had left by the time the Eagles would go through the process again.

General manager Howie Roseman assumed the role of the owner’s confidant, but Chip Kelly was Lurie’s primary target. The innovative college coach overhauled the Eagles’ football operations as quickly as he spoke and had immediate success.

» READ MORE: ‘Alligator wrapped in armadillo skin’: Howie Roseman’s passion has the Eagles’ resilient GM back in the Super Bowl

But a power struggle between Kelly and Roseman altered the dynamic and Lurie fired Kelly less than a year after giving him personnel authority.

While Kelly lacked some of the interpersonal skills that Lurie has since stressed in his hirings, he modernized the Eagles and had every other NFL team adopting some of his changes, from sports science to music at practice.

Two years later, when Nick Foles was thrust under center after Carson Wentz’s season-ending injury, Pederson utilized some of Kelly’s offensive scheme to play to the backup quarterback’s strengths and even called him for more detail.

“I’m a huge Eagles fan,” said Kelly, now at UCLA, in December. “I’m a huge Doug fan. I’m a huge Andy fan. I’m a huge Nick fan. I’m a huge Jeffrey Lurie fan. I think people think that if things don’t go some way there’s supposed to be animosity. I loved my time there.

“I’m pulling as much as I can because I’d love to see them win another one. I’d love to see Jeffrey win a second one.”

Pederson wasn’t interviewed by any other team during the 2016 offseason. Reid told the Eagles his then-offensive coordinator was ready, but Lurie was apprehensive. Pederson didn’t have a complete list of assistants and the team had to help him fill out his staff.

Lurie has always been an engaged and involved owner. But for most of his first 20 years he allowed his coaches and Banner, who had specialized in the salary cap and found other non-traditional ways to gain advantages over other teams, to run the show.

Reid also had a deft touch with keeping Lurie, whose love of the draft had him present for many personnel meetings, at bay.

But the owner felt inclined to step in on Pederson’s assistants at times with varying degrees of success. After the first year, he blocked quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo from leaving and wanted Reich out. And two years after the Super Bowl, he cornered Pederson into firing offensive coordinator Mike Groh.

“I will never tell a coach who to hire,” Lurie said last April, “but I will evaluate a coach on exactly how good their staff is.”

The relationship had reached an impasse following the 4-11-1 season in 2020. Lurie wasn’t satisfied with Pederson’s initial list of coaching replacements — among other concerns — and when the coach declined to alter his suggestions, he was fired.

» READ MORE: Jeffrey Lurie claims not to be the meddlesome Eagles owner others describe

The Eagles’ ensuing coaching search was again an exhaustive one. When the first round of interviews failed to satisfy Lurie, Roseman made calls and Reich endorsed the off-the-radar Sirianni, his offensive coordinator with the Colts.

Sirianni was on vacation with his family close to Lurie’s West Palm Beach estate where interviews were being conducted. He didn’t bring a suit for the trip, but the Eagles were impressed, nonetheless.

Asked what made him think the meeting went well, Sirianni said that it “went for about eight hours and they asked me to come back the next day.”

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The diverse group the Eagles had assembled saw the passion in which Sirianni spoke about almost anything related to coaching and football. But it was the emotion he displayed whenever he spoke about his father, Fran — his first coach and mentor — that touched many in the room.

“Maybe there wasn’t an Aha! Moment,” Sirianni said. “It’s just the overall emotion of how much my dad and the relationship means to me. And sometimes it starts with a son and a father.”

» READ MORE: Connect and trust: For Nick Sirianni, his Eagles coaching journey and fatherhood align

Lurie, who lost his father, Morrie, to kidney cancer at the age of 9, has spoken before about how that moment was an early pivot into adulthood. Perhaps that is why he’s been one of the more socially-conscious owners, left-leaning, but relatable to many within the Eagles organization.

After Kelly’s departure, he spoke about the importance of coaches “opening their hearts” to get others to “achieve peak performance,” which may sound new-agey on the surface, but may be the secret to Lurie choosing the right candidates, despite their relative anonymity.

“He’s got great instincts for it. He really does,” Roseman said. “When we go through it and we talk about the candidates, you can see where he’s coming from, what he’s thinking, and it’s very rare that we really disagree on guys at this point because we’re looking for the same kind of traits.”

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Lurie has dialed back on some of the formality he had with Pederson. Tuesday weekly meetings with the coach are no longer. Sirianni didn’t make a single change to his staff last offseason, although he could lose some assistants after the Super Bowl.

“I’m very conscious of giving a coach tremendous support early on, especially, because they need that,” Lurie said. “It’s a very complicated and difficult job. There’s going to be ups and downs, so I’m there for them. I have their back.”

Few predicted the Boston native heir who originally struck out as a Hollywood producer would someday become quite possibly the best owner in Philly sports history. When he made a brief cameo in the 1996 film, Jerry Maguire, some locals made fun of his one line: “We gotta win Super Bowls” as the drought continued.

“They used to have some award for the owner of the year — it meant nothing, but I was named owner of the year,” Lurie said, when asked to explain how the line ended up in the movie. “I said, ‘That doesn’t interest me in the slightest. I just want to win Super Bowls.’”

Standing in his way to No. 2 is Reid. The coach may be near-perfect coming off byes, but two of his four losses with an extra week have come in the Super Bowl. Sirianni, meanwhile, is 3-0, including the playoffs, after his conversation with Reid.

“He was very gracious,” said Sirianni, who went back to New York City with his wife during October’s bye week. “Now did he tell me everything? I don’t know.”