If Nick Sirianni wants to save his career as the Eagles’ coach, he needs to learn to calm down

Eagles coach Nick Sirianni talks during a press conference after the team’s loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the wild-card round.

So it turns out that the most valuable acquisition the Eagles could make this offseason won’t be a decent linebacker or a young cornerback but a Hefty bag of cannabis gummies for their head coach. Nick Sirianni needs something to calm him down, and the time for brainstorming to solve this problem is getting short. Maybe they could blast Enya or Bon Iver from the Lincoln Financial Field sound system during pregame warmups. Maybe Jalen Hurts can light a lavender candle and have it burning between offensive possessions. Maybe the team should just keep a tranquilizer gun on the sideline in case of an emergency. Break glass if Big Dom gets tossed from another game.

Coach Nick Sirianni (center) reacts to a penalty on the Eagles defense during the 20-17 loss to the Seattle Seahawks on Dec. 18.

Derrick Gunn, who was bid farewell by NBC Sports Philadelphia in the summer of 2020 yet hasn’t stopped breaking news about the Eagles since, put out a social media post Wednesday that was as explosive as it was unsurprising. Citing sources, Gunn said that the midseason suspension of Dom DiSandro, the Eagles’ chief security officer, had ramifications beyond DiSandro’s absence for the Eagles’ final six games. “Big Dom suspended-controls Sirianni’s emotions on sideline,” Gunn wrote on Twitter/X, “in his absence Nick gets in numerous arguments with players/coaches during games.” [sic]

Eagles coach Nick Sirianni and chief security officer Dom DiSandro (right) talk with officials after DiSandro and the 49ers’ Dre Greenlaw were involved in a sideline incident during a game in December.

When DiSandro confronted 49ers linebacker Dre Greenlaw on Dec. 3, the Eagles apparently lost more than a game and more than the figure who, by never leaving Sirianni’s side, represented a show of force against anyone who would confront the head coach. They were without a key member of their game-day crew, and if it’s too much to say that DiSandro’s absence was a big reason that the Eagles’ season spiraled into oblivion after that 42-19 loss, it’s enough to say that his exile didn’t help — and that Sirianni relied on him more than anyone knew.

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That has to be the primary concern for the Eagles here: that Sirianni’s inability to regulate himself during the heat and tension of a game might be having a material effect on the team’s performance. As just one example, everyone saw Sirianni shouting at Haason Reddick and DeVonta Smith during the Eagles’ ugly victory over the Giants on Christmas, and in light of Gunn’s reporting, it’s not so easy anymore to dismiss that incident as just an ordinary player-coach interaction, though Sirianni tried after the game.

“I get animated a lot,” he said. “There are things that when mistakes are happening or trying to get the communication going, just a little bit of that. That happens throughout a game. It’s going to be between players and players, coaches and players, coaches and coaches. But when you have the relationships that we have and the connections that we have, we’re able to move on quickly.

“The guys know all we’re trying to do and coaches know all we’re trying to do is get everybody to play their best, and sometimes that’s with a smack on the butt and sometimes that’s with a yell.”

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Yelling is fine. Yelling happens. Yelling can be a useful coaching and motivational tool. And if Sirianni was merely barking at his players from time to time, no one would bat an eye. But that’s not what’s happening. He has established a pattern of behavior now, and there’s no sense that there’s any larger strategy or purpose to the way he carries himself during a game, the moments before kickoff, and the moments immediately after. Lots of his players love him because he’s authentic; it’s a genuine strength of his. It’s only a strength, though, up to a point. It’s damaging and destructive when Sirianni allows himself to be totally uninhibited, when those guardrails fall — and DiSandro is an important guardrail — and he crosses the line that separates an understandable reaction from a loss of self-control.

There’s nothing phony about acting like a professional in a professional setting — a setting, remember, that already allows for plenty of displays of emotion that would be inappropriate in another work environment but are run-of-the-mill in the NFL. Sirianni can fist-bump and chest-bump and scream in joy and sometimes scream in anger. All coaches can and do. What he shouldn’t do, what he has done too often, is taunt the Eagles’ opponents and those opponents’ fans, mug for the cameras when things are going well for his team, and lose himself so completely in the distractions and noise that he can’t focus fully on the details that are supposed to matter.

The problem here isn’t that Sirianni cares. It’s that he cares too much, that he struggles with the pressures and demands of his job. Late in the season, he’d show up to his media availabilities looking like he hadn’t slept in days — gaunt and dragging, stubble on his chin, eyes rimmed red. But working longer and harder doesn’t necessarily mean working better and smarter, and it looks more and more like Sirianni isn’t mature enough yet to know the difference.

He had better learn, and fast, for his own sake. If he doesn’t, if he’s not careful, it’s going to cost him his job. Time to grow up, Nick. Time to grow up.

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