PHILADELPHIA — It was during OTAs this spring when Eagles coach Nick Sirianni tapped left tackle Jordan Mailata on the shoulder as he passed him on the first floor of the practice facility and said, “Hey, come up and see me in my office when you have time.”
“F—, what did I do wrong?” Mailata thought. Did he slip up at practice? Had he said something he shouldn’t have to the media?
After getting himself a plate of food in the cafeteria (“If I was getting told off, I was getting told off eating,” Mailata joked), he walked upstairs to Sirianni’s office. But Sirianni wasn’t there. Mailata poked his head into a meeting room and there he found Sirianni in the middle of a conversation with a host of assistants. Mailata sheepishly said he’d come back later and tried to duck out, but Sirianni insisted on leaving the meeting to talk with the veteran offensive lineman.
“Have a seat,” Sirianni said. “You’re not in trouble or anything. I just wanted to see how you’re doing. How’s Dad doing?”
“Because he knew about Dad,” Mailata said.
Mailata’s father, Tupa’i, had suffered a heart attack on the plane ride back to Australia after making the trip to Arizona to see his son play in Super Bowl LVII against the Kansas City Chiefs in February 2023. There was a time, Mailata said, when the family wasn’t sure whether Tupa’i would survive.
Sirianni served as a confidant to Mailata during that period, having sit-downs with him and creating a safe space for Mailata “to talk and get my feelings out.”
“He was very supportive and said if I needed to miss time, I could miss time. That meant the world to me,” Mailata said. “I love that guy. I’ll do anything for Nick to be honest.”
Sirianni can be a confounding public figure. He reams referees and taunts opposing players (including, most recently, Eagles franchise icon Zach Ertz) and mugs for the camera. He’ll bark at fans in the stands — even at home, as was the case in a narrow Week 6 win against the Cleveland Browns at Lincoln Financial Field. He oversaw a historic collapse at the end of 2023, a season defined in part by his inability to get on the same page with franchise quarterback Jalen Hurts.
And yet his teams win at a historic clip. The Eagles have reached 14 regular-season wins twice in their 91-year history and both have come during Sirianni’s four years at the helm — one this season, helping to ease speculation about his job security.
With a record of 48-20, he has produced the third-best winning percentage (.706) by a head coach in the Super Bowl era behind John Madden and George Allen. The only other coaches to reach the postseason in each of their first four seasons are John Harbaugh, Bill Cowher, John Robinson, Chuck Knox and Paul Brown, with Cowher the only member of that group to reach a Super Bowl during that time.
A talent-rich roster has certainly helped the team’s record. But setting the culture largely falls to Sirianni, and connectivity has been a strength under his stewardship of the Eagles — outside of the ’23 downfall. Ensuring relationships are strong from player to coach and player to player became a heightened priority this season as Sirianni ceded control of the offense to coordinator Kellen Moore and took on more of an overarching CEO role. From handwritten letters that appear in a player’s locker to deep conversations on the most delicate of issues, just about everyone on the roster has a moment they can point to that illustrates Sirianni’s personal touch, which has helped foster player buy-in.
“It’s incredible to have a coach like him who cares about each individual on this team like that. Yeah, he’s a special coach,” veteran long snapper Rick Lovato said. “Every team I’ve been on that’s been to the Super Bowl or been deep into the playoffs, we’ve been the tightest of groups. And that’s how I feel about this team this year.”
ONE OF THE handwritten letters Mailata received from Sirianni sits in his locker at the NovaCare Complex.
It came after Mailata was voted captain by his peers for the first time this season — a major point of pride for the former Aussie rugby player, who knew next to nothing about football when he was drafted in the seventh round in 2018 and has since developed into one of the best left tackles in the NFL.
“It just detailed how I’ve earned it and how no one can take that from me, the way I lead, the way I practice, the way I am in the locker room,” Mailata said. “It was pretty cool.”
Cornerback Isaiah Rodgers received his before his first start with the Eagles against the Jacksonville Jaguars in early December. Rodgers was suspended for the entire 2023 season for violating the league’s policy on gambling. His opportunity to start for the first time since December 2022 came when Darius Slay Jr. was ruled out with an injury.
Rodgers said he packs the letter in his travel bag and reads it before every game.
“The notes aren’t just generated, something that you just find motivational,” he said. “It’s real personal, like you know he wrote it from the heart.”
Linebacker Nakobe Dean‘s letter was delivered by an assistant coach in late October before the Cincinnati Bengals game. Sirianni expressed how proud he was of Dean for coming back from multiple injuries to establish himself as an impact starter and encouraged him to continue to climb.
“I don’t know no NFL coaches doing that,” Dean said of the letters. “When it comes to being for your players and having the utmost confidence and respect for your players, I think Nick Sirianni is second to none.”
In a sad twist of fate, Dean tore the patellar tendon in his left knee during Sunday’s wild-card playoff win over the Green Bay Packers and will miss the remainder of the playoffs.
Some players have entrusted Sirianni with the most sensitive of issues.
Sirianni and Lovato were having a conversation about family and children one day early last season when Lovato revealed that he and his wife, Jordan, were struggling with fertility. Sirianni shared that someone he was close to was also going through it, and that led to weekly check-ins from Sirianni to make sure the Lovatos were doing OK.
“He was one of the first ones I told when we went through IVF and found out we were pregnant, and he was just so incredibly excited for us,” Rick Lovato said. “It’s so great to have a coach that cares that deeply about your family and not just you and football.”
The Lovatos announced the birth of their son, Freddie, in October.
Defensive tackle Milton Williams isn’t sure how Sirianni found out that his mom, Willanette, had breast cancer. But that led to their connection, as Sirianni shared the difficulties of watching his dad, Fran, battle cancer multiple times throughout his life, including when Nick was a child.
“We talked on the phone, I came up to his office. We talked about everything,” Williams said.
“He was telling me how it was hard for him with his dad. Always being around him, he was an energetic guy and seeing him have to go through that. It was kind of the same thing seeing my mom having to go through chemo and losing hair and being tired all the time. It was just getting encouragement [from Sirianni] and knowing how to deal with certain things.”
THE RELATIONSHIP THAT has gotten the most attention is the one between Sirianni and Hurts.
During the offseason, sources detailed a seasonlong strain between the coach and quarterback, stemming mostly from a disconnect in offensive visions.
Hurts often gave short, awkward answers to questions about his head coach beginning late last season, foregoing opportunities to deliver a positive message about Sirianni and instead deepening questions about what was happening behind the scenes.
His tone changed pretty dramatically after the team’s Week 5 bye. The two had myriad conversations over that time period, hammering out a direction for the offense and team that helped fuel the Eagles’ surge, turning a 2-2 start into a 14-3 finish.
“I’m happy and fortunate that we were able to come together in harmony and have the same goal in mind, trying to get this thing right,” Hurts said in October. “I got a ton of confidence in him, a ton of confidence in what he brings and everything he’s been able to accomplish.”
One of the sources familiar with Hurts’ thinking who signaled things were off between Hurts and Sirianni around this time last year told ESPN their relationship is in a better place.
“Once you learn a person, you learn how to deal with that person,” the source said.
PART OF SIRIANNI’S leadership style is confronting issues when they come up rather than sweeping them under the rug.
Players found this out not long after Sirianni was hired in 2021. His introductory news conference was a bit of a disaster. Speaking to the audience virtually from the NovaCare auditorium because of COVID restrictions, Sirianni seemed tight and struggled as he tried to hit on all of his bullet points. It resulted in an already skeptical fan base becoming even more anxiety-ridden about the man replacing the only coach to lead the Eagles to a Super Bowl win, Doug Pederson.
“As soon as we got in a team meeting [after his news conference] he was like, ‘Guys, that was a f—ing terrible introduction. I’d like to do it over again but I can’t, but just so you’re aware of it,” right tackle Lane Johnson said. “I appreciate his honesty and you always know where you stand.”
Sirianni took a similar head-on approach after defensive end Brandon Graham added fuel to an already turbulent week in early December by suggesting Hurts and A.J. Brown are no longer friends. Sirianni addressed it during a team meeting that week, helping to clear the air so the team could then turn its attention to its upcoming opponent, the Pittsburgh Steelers.
He acknowledged that his CEO role allowed him more time and ability to handle issues like that one.
“Obviously when you’re wearing more hats, you have a little less time. You still go through all those processes that you go through with the offense and the defense and the special teams. But you are able to step out a little bit more,” he said. “I’ve been able to go to the defensive line room for a meeting as opposed to always being in with the quarterbacks or with the offense. So that applies here as well, yeah.”
Through time and connection, the players in the locker room have come to know Sirianni well, so their perspective when he taunts a fan or goes after a player or coach on the sideline can be different from the general public.
“Sometimes, he’ll just come through [the locker room] to get a haircut, and he’ll be like, ‘Want to get a quick game of ping pong?'” Mailata said. “A quick game turns into like three games because he lost the first one. He’s so competitive. So once you understand his true nature, for us it’s easy to defend him because that’s just who he is. It’s hard to understand that as a fan.
“Could he be more professional? One hundred percent. But we’ve always supported him in saying, ‘Just be you.’ We know you like to wear your heart on your sleeve. Continue to do that and we’ll continue to bat for you because you always bat for us.'”
That last point is a crucial one: Sirianni often takes the heat for his players’ missteps even when it makes him look foolish. His players know it. And that’s one reason why they play for him and have his back when others are crushing him.
“I’ve had conversations with Nick about this, and his answer f—ing shocked me,” Mailata said. “He said, ‘That’s my job.’ I was like, ‘No it’s not. You’ve got a family too, brother. You’ve got to think about them.’ But he was like, ‘No, that’s my burden to bear. That’s my job: to take the heat off you guys so you can go out there and play free.'”
