Why Sirianni began 2023 with one last look back at the pain

As the Eagles got together this spring, there was an elephant in the room.

So Nick Sirianni addressed it.

When the 2023 Eagles met for the first time just months after the 2022 team’s season ended with disappointment in Phoenix, the Eagles’ head coach addressed the Super Bowl loss. He addressed the pain. But most importantly, he addressed the journey.

Sirianni showed the team a photo of Eagles players walking off the field at State Farm Stadium after the 38-35 loss to the Chiefs as red and yellow confetti rained down.

“I think my point was, it's OK to use this as motivation,” Sirianni said just before the Eagles broke for their summer break. “You should use it as motivation. But the end goal is not just to say, ‘I'm going there.’ It's about the process.”

For the most part, Sirianni doesn’t want to talk too much about the Super Bowl. It happened; they lost; it’s over. In fact, it’s worth pointing out that when he spoke to a smaller group of reporters at the tail end of the Eagles’ OTAs in June, he wasn’t the one who brought up the Super Bowl loss in the first place. Sirianni was simply answering questions.

On the other hand, Sirianni was the one who brought up the Super Bowl in one of the first team meetings of the 2023 spring. And he’s the kind of guy who doesn’t do anything in a team setting without putting in a ton of thought.

“Hey, we're not going to talk about this a lot because this is not who we are,” Sirianni said, echoing his message to the team. “…Our end goal may be, yes, win the division, all those different things. But our goal every day isn't to come in here to chase the Super Bowl. You hope it gets to that, but it's to look at the daily increments, right? And how we get better, how we get better, how we get better.”

In the offseason, Sirianni takes himself for walks around his South Jersey town thinking of stories to tell his players. These stories then eventually get unleashed during team meetings throughout the year and he’s always looking for new ideas.

If he ever wants to tell a story about losing the Super Bowl and embracing the pain of that, he won’t have to dig too far.

“I don't know when the time is right to tell that story,” Sirianni said. “I get a feel for that throughout the week. But of course you can use it. But I really try not to bring it bring it up, last year. Because it's the same thing going into last year, we had a lot of expectations once that roster kept building. A lot of expectations, a lot of visions, and all that was, was expectations to us. It was, 'OK, here are the expectations because people view us as being a good team. None of that really matters unless we work every single day.’”

There’s probably a reason teams that lose the Super Bowl have traditionally struggled the following season.

In fact, Sirianni said the Eagles have done a deep dive into the analytics of teams coming off the Super Bowl, trying to extrapolate anything that can help them going into the 2023 season. In the spring, the Eagles had a bunch of data without a complete understanding of causation, but they were trying to turn over every stone.

“We’ll definitely study it,” Sirianni said. “I think probably one thing that I feel when you go to a Super Bowl the people come back thinking overconfident or not as hungry. We didn’t win. I know how hungry our guys are.”

When asked this spring if he had reached out to any former head coaches of teams that lost the Super Bowl, Sirianni said he hadn’t. But then he thanked a reporter for the suggestion and said he probably would.

Because in the last two decades, just one team has returned to the Super Bowl the season after losing it. That was the 2018 Patriots, who won the Lombardi Trophy the year after the Eagles beat them in Super Bowl LII.

Of the other 19 Super Bowl losers in the last 20 years, four teams lost in the conference championship the following season, five lost in the divisional round, two lost in the wild card round and, amazingly, eight (40%) missed the playoffs entirely.

It’s really hard to get back to the Super Bowl. Especially after losing it.

Perhaps one of the main reasons is there’s this trap of wanting to press the fast forward button. The problem is that button doesn’t exist for NFL teams. Once you’ve been to the big game, all you want to do is get back there. But if you try to skip any of the steps along the way — OTAs, training camp, Weeks 1-18 — you’re never going to get back into that position.

When Sirianni showed his team that confetti photo, he paired it with a quote that has been attributed to the pastor Steven Furtick: “We admire those with great results, and we desire that reward. But you cannot admire the results or desire the reward if you do not embrace the routine.”

At least there’s some reason for optimism. The past few losers in the Super Bowl — Patriots, Rams, 49ers, Chiefs and Bengals — have remained contenders after those losses. The Eagles should be right there with them.

For Sirianni, it seems to boil down to this: You can’t just ignore the Super Bowl loss, so you might as well get something out of it.

The key is to be fueled by the loss but remain focused on each step. The end goal is the end goal, but there are steps along the way. Important steps. The Eagles can’t afford to skip any of them.

Subscribe to Eagle Eye anywhere you get your podcasts: 
Apple Podcasts | YouTube Music | Spotify | Stitcher | Art19 | RSS | Watch on YouTube