Nick Sirianni was driving from his home to the Philadelphia practice facility the day before the NFC Championship Game late last month.
About a 15-minute commute, it gave the Jamestown, New York native and Eagles’ head coach a chance to discard the “one-day-at-a-time” mantra that has served him so well the last two years in exchange for — if only momentarily — some of his favorite music.
“I was listening to some of the songs that I would listen to before sporting events when I played,” he told Jamestown newspaper The Post-Journal last week. “I had tears in my eyes and I thought to myself … ‘I get a chance to play (in a game) to go to the biggest sporting event.’”
That “biggest sporting event,” of course, is the Super Bowl.
“It’s everything I ever dreamed of when I was a kid,” he said.
But first he had to find a way to beat San Francisco.
So as he crossed the Walt Whitman Bridge into the city a couple Saturdays ago, he couldn’t help but get a little emotional.
“There has been a lot of hard work, a lot of mental toughness, a lot of things that I’ve had to go through to get to this spot,” he said. “… I kind of got choked up.”
Not coincidentally, one of the songs on Nick’s playlist was from the “Rocky III” movie, a favorite of his growing up on Howard Avenue in West Ellicott. It is also not a coincidence that the Rocky statue and the “Rocky Steps” — both located at the Philadelphia Museum of Art — are two of the most popular attractions in Philly.
But if you polled Eagles fans this week, the guy who graduated from Southwestern Central School in 1999 and who saw his team rout the 49ers a week and a half ago might even eclipse both of those iconic attractions in popularity. Because just before 6:30 p.m. Eastern time Sunday, Nick will be standing with his team on the sidelines at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, ready to face Kansas City.
The Lombardi Trophy will be at stak
Nick’s coaching resume includes collegiate stops with the University of Mount Union, his alma mater, and Indiana University of Pennsylvania; and NFL stints with the Chiefs, the Chargers and the Colts before arriving in the City of Brotherly Love on Jan. 24, 2021.
That just happened to be the wedding anniversary of his parents, Fran and Amy, who have two older sons. Mike is the head football coach at Washington & Jefferson College while Jay is the Section VI football chairman and former head coach at SWCS.
But Nick’s first season in Philadelphia began with a — pardon the pun — “rocky” opening video conference that resulted in him being roasted unfairly. By season’s end, however, the Eagles, who started 2-5, made the playoffs before losing to Tampa Bay in the wild-card round.
This season, Philadelphia has been arguably the best team in the entire league.
Jay isn’t surprised.
“First of all, he’s a worker,” he said. “He grinds. Secondly, he takes everything from all the coaches (he’s worked with). He learns something from everybody.”
One of Jay’s fondest memories of his youngest brother’s football acumen came during training camp with the Colts in 2018. Sitting in the back of a meeting room, Jay watched Nick, the team’s offensive coordinator, teach his players.
“I was so proud,” Jay said in an interview a couple years ago. “He did a tremendous job… It was really impressive. At that moment, I’m like, ‘Man, he’s legit.’”
The rest of the NFL has found that out, too.
Personality and
Nick wears his feelings on the sleeves of his Eagles’ gear during every game.
Good play, bad play or an official’s flag will likely draw a reaction from the 41-year-old married father of three.
To those who know him best, that’s not a surprise.
“He doesn’t fake it,” Jay said. “He’s as genuine as they come. You may not like it, but he’s not faking it. That’s who he is. That’s the thing I’m most proud of. He’s doing it the way he wanted to do it. He’s the same guy he was coming out of Western New York.”
“I’m having fun, and not everybody has fun on the sideline or in sports, and sometimes that can be taken a couple of different ways… I’m getting some heat in the national media (because) not everybody always likes something that’s different.” Nick noted.
One of the people who knows Nick as well as anyone is his friend, Tom Langworthy, also a 1999 Southwestern High School graduate, who is the head football coach at Jamestown High School. The pair grew up not far from each other and they regularly took part in every possible competitive activity.
“I’m not sure that any two kids in America spent more time thinking and talking about football and working out for football than we did,” Nick said.
Added Langworthy, who will attend the Super Bowl with his wife, Amy: “You knew he was going to be successful and you knew he was going to get those promotions, so I guess in that respect it’s not that surprising that he’s at the level he’s at. But it’s still incredible to think that your childhood best friend is coaching in the Super Bowl, and I think he’s got a good chance to be a Super Bowl champion.”
Following the Eagles’ win over San Francisco in the NFC title game, the Sirianni family was escorted to the field at Lincoln Financial Field for the postgame ceremonies.
“It was exciting, but as we were walking on the field and I saw my parents walking on the field, it just kind of hit me how emotional it was for us as a family,” said Jay, who had just had a conversation with another Jamestown native, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, moments before. “I could see the tears in Nick’s eyes and my parents’ eyes. This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and 65,000 people were on their feet cheering. I was in awe. Toward the end, (the media) was doing interviews, I was standing on the Eagles’ emblem at midfield and I didn’t want to leave.”
Fran, who turned 76 on Tuesday, was wondering if it was all a “dream we are having.”
“Who would have ever thought we’d be in the center of the field when they presented the conference championship trophy?” he asked.
Amy still can’t believe it.
“I don’t know when it will really sink in,” she said. “I guess when we are landing in Phoenix.”
That will be Friday, about 48 hours before kickoff of Super Bowl LVII.
“As a coach in the NFL, you always get an opportunity to buy Super Bowl tickets every year,” Nick said. “And, every time, my wife (Brett) would ask, ‘Do you want to take your dad?’ I’m like, ‘No, I’m not going until I’m in it, until I’m coaching in it,’ and here we are, we’re going.”
