Statement on Firing Nick Sirianni
A head coach who does not call the plays, does not design the offense, and has repeatedly mismanaged the moments that decide games.
The job he actually has
Nick Sirianni has not been the primary offensive play-caller since the middle of 2021. The offense has been called by Shane Steichen, Kellen Moore, Kevin Patullo, and now Sean Mannion. He has described his own involvement as “here and there.” When the offense has struggled, he has said he has not considered taking the play-calling back.
That is the CEO model. The head coach handles culture, the building, the press, and the decisions that are not scheme. It works when the coordinators are excellent and the talent is deep enough to cover mistakes. It fails when the only decisions left for the head coach are the ones that decide close games, and those decisions are wrong.
Sirianni does not call the offense. He does not call the defense. What remains is game management: clock, timeouts, fourth-down choices, special teams decisions at the end of halves and games. That is the part of the job he still owns. The record on those decisions is the case against him.
Games he cost
These are not scheme debates. These are situations where the head coach’s call, or the sequence he allowed, decided the outcome or removed the chance to win.
Panthers — October 19, 2026 (fourth straight loss)
The Eagles lose at home to Carolina. It is the fourth straight loss. The offense ranks near the bottom of the league. Saquon Barkley has been out since Week 4. Lane Johnson retired earlier in the month. Jalen Hurts is done for the season after a blood clot. Tanner McKee starts and the offense manages 222 yards.
After the game, Sirianni is asked if Sean Mannion will continue to call plays. He says yes. He says “everything’s on the table” to fix the offense, then adds that the play-caller and the coaches are not changing.
“Everything’s on the table.”
— Nick Sirianni, then clarifying that the play-caller and coaches are not changing
Four losses in a row. The offense is broken. The people calling and coaching it stay the same.
London — October 11, 2026
Eagles trail by two with under two minutes left. Hurts drives into field goal range. Jake Elliott hits a 48-yarder. Philadelphia takes a 17-16 lead with eight seconds left. Jacksonville has no timeouts.
A touchback puts the Jaguars at their own 35 with almost no time. Instead the Eagles keep the kickoff in play. Ameer Abdullah returns it 53 yards. Cam Little hits a 57-yard field goal as time expires. Final 19-17.
Before the kickoff, the final drive itself left more time than it needed to. First-and-10 at the Jacksonville 34 with 25 seconds and the Jaguars holding one timeout. Incomplete passes and a completion out of bounds stopped the clock. They left eight seconds. A better sequence ends the game on the field goal or with almost no time remaining.
“I didn’t make the right decision, and I lost us that game. What hurts there is that the guys fought so hard and then I don’t make the decision that I should make at the end of the game and I cost us that game. I put that fully on me.”
— Nick Sirianni, postgame
He said it again the next day. He studied similar situations. He still chose the one that gave the other team a return.
Rams — Week before London, 2026
Fourth-down and clock choices again put the result in the hands of a defense that had already been asked to stop the other team too many times. Fans and local coverage pointed to the same pattern: go for it in spots where points were available, then fail to manage the end of the game. The talent edge that used to cover these decisions has been thinner.
NFC Divisional — Rams, January 19, 2025
End of the first half. A sack knocks the Eagles out of field goal range with roughly 25–30 seconds left. They still have a timeout. A short completion or two gets them back into Elliott’s range. Instead Sirianni lets the clock run down to three seconds, then calls timeout and tries a Hail Mary. The play is sacked. Potential points are left on the field in a close game.
Arizona — December 31, 2023
Tied late in the fourth. The Eagles run a conservative sequence — two quarterback draws and a screen — gain five yards, and settle for a field goal. Arizona has time to come back and wins 35-31. The next day Sirianni admitted they could have been more aggressive on that drive and that he did not handle the clock as well as he could have.
Wild Card — 49ers, January 2026
Clock and timeout management on the final drive drew heavy criticism. Analysts noted a timeout used after a turnover on downs that potentially removed the chance to force a punt and get the ball back. The Eagles lose 23-19. The defense had played well enough to win. The end-of-game sequence did not.
The longer record
In 2023 the Eagles lost six of their final seven games and were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. It was one of the largest late-season collapses of the century. Owner Jeffrey Lurie kept Sirianni. The Super Bowl roster covered a lot of the same late-game issues. Saquon Barkley’s 2024 season was a major part of that. So was Jalen Hurts. Hurts has carried this team for years — as a runner, as a passer in critical moments, and as the leader in the building. He has won games the coaching staff did not put the team in position to win. The mask is thinner now.
Sirianni has also hired first-time play-callers, watched the offense struggle, and declined to take the calls back. He stripped defensive play-calling from Sean Desai in 2023. He has not done the same on offense when the results were comparable. That is a choice. It is part of the same pattern: he does not call the plays, and he does not intervene when the people who do are not getting it done.
His own words
“I didn’t do my job good enough in that situation.”
— Nick Sirianni, London
“Those ones stick with you, and that’ll stick with me for a long time.”
— Nick Sirianni, London
Accountability after the fact is not the same as competence in the moment. A head coach who repeatedly creates situations where he later has to explain that he cost the team the game is not a long-term solution. The players already know how to fight. They need the last eight seconds, the last timeout, and the last fourth down handled correctly.
The case
Nick Sirianni is not the offensive play-caller. He is not the defensive play-caller. He is the person responsible for the decisions that remain when the coordinators have done their work. In London he made the decision that handed the game away and said so himself. That game is the clearest recent example. It is not the only one.
If the Eagles want a head coach who calls plays, this is not the person. If they want a head coach who manages the end of games, the record on clock, timeouts, and special teams decisions is the case against him. Either way, the current arrangement has a documented history of costing games.
Fire Nick Sirianni.