With all due respect to Aaron Rodgers, there might not be a bigger enigma in the NFL right now than Philadelphia Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni.
Week after week, Sirianni finds ways to puzzle fans while stacking wins at a pace the league has never seen. Monday night’s grind-it-out road win over the Green Bay Packers was just the latest example.
On a cold, miserable night for both offenses, Sirianni called an uncharacteristically conservative game — until he didn’t.
Philly’s decision to play for a field goal early in the third quarter was a mysterious choice, one Eagles fans have rarely seen during the Sirianni era. On third-and-12 from the Packers 25, the Eagles called a run play with Will Shipley to set up a 39-yard field goal attempt; Jake Elliott converted the kick for the game’s first points.
The Eagles led 10-7 with the ball and the Packers out of timeouts with 33 seconds remaining in regulation. But from the Green Bay 35, Sirianni passed on a field goal attempt — or a punt — in favor of a Jalen Hurts dagger shot to A.J. Brown; the pass fell incomplete, and the Packers were left with 27 seconds, needing about 30 yards to get into reasonable range for a game-tying field goal.
MODEL LIKED PUNT BY A LOT pic.twitter.com/rR1fnpEiyN
— Seth Walder (@SethWalder) November 11, 2025
Brandon McManus wound up wildly missing a 64-yard attempt as time expired, but that didn’t stop Joe Buck, Troy Aikman, and just about every fan watching from wondering, “What was Sirianni thinking?”
Philadelphia Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni holds the ultimate trump card over his haters — the scoreboard
Absolutely no one, including the super computers, agrees with how Sirianni handled Monday’s final possession.
The results, however, continue to be impossible to ignore.
The Eagles won, again. They’re now 7-2 and back atop the NFC standings despite one of the league’s toughest schedules. And when you double-click into Sirianni’s coaching record over his four-plus years as a head coach, the numbers are almost hard to comprehend.
For all the cracks about Nick Sirianni, he's now moved past George Allen for the 2nd-best winning % in the Super Bowl era. Only John Madden is ahead of him.
He moved past Dick Vermeil for No. 3 in wins in Eagles history.
He's now 5-0 coming off the bye week and 10-0 vs the NFC…
— Zach Berman (@ZBerm) November 11, 2025
Sirianni improved to 55-22 in the regular season, a winning percentage of .714. He’s also 6-3 in the playoffs, qualifying all four years with two Super Bowl appearances and one title, over a Kansas City Chiefs team that was hunting the first three-peat in NFL history.
The most popular argument against Sirianni’s success is that the Eagles are winning in spite of him. Philadelphia has the luxury of, arguably, the NFL’s best general manager in Howie Roseman; there’s no doubt, the Eagles have had talent-rich rosters in all of Sirianni’s seasons.
The head coach still deserves credit for managing some big personalities and building a winning culture. Sirianni may baffle fans with some of his sideline antics and in-game decision-making, but he comes up smelling like roses way more often than not.
Read more:DeVonta Smith says quiet part Packers learned brutally (but Eagles fans knew)
Sirianni’s either the luckiest head coach in NFL history, or an evil genius. No matter where you put him in the all-time rankings, Philly's head coach deserves a lot more credit than he's getting right now.