HOW STUNNING IF SIRIANNI LOSES HIS JOB WHILE MAYFIELD RETURNS AS A HERO
Anything is possible in the NFL, even the removal of a head coach who nearly won the Super Bowl in February, along with the fearless return of a quarterback who no longer is an exiled lost cause
Imagine a coach reaching a Super Bowl at age 41 and losing his job not a year later. Just the same, imagine a quarterback declared a bust as he and his wife lived inside the Cleveland stadium — an insurance ad, remember? — and somehow regathers his skills this season in Tampa Bay, playing for $4 million.
Nick Sirianni should lose his gig. Baker Mayfield deserves to have his joy. Such is the frenzy of the National Football League, which draws elephantine broadcast numbers and coaxes us to watch playoff games yet doesn’t always make sense. Let them sit on snow banks and watch the Bills in Buffalo. Let 23 million watch a game streaming on Peacock.
And let Sirianni fall into a third-year pit and watch Philadelphia owner Jeffrey Lurie, who knows Bill Belichick, Jim Harbaugh, Mike Vrabel and Pete Carroll are available and must pounce now. This while Mayfield throws three more touchdown passes, leading the Buccaneers to a 32-9 victory and a spot in the divisional round. I’m not sure which makes less sense. Because quarterbacks tend to hit and miss, particularly in a season of intense injuries, Mayfield is showing production of the player who won the Heisman Trophy and was the No. 1 overall pick in 2018.
But Sirianni? The Eagles started 10-1, with Jalen Hurts as the presumed MVP, and proceeded to embarrass everyone from Rocky Balboa to security chief Dom DiSandro. They lost six of their last seven in a grotesque streak that left people stunned and wondering how quickly a coach could be fired after reaching a Super Bowl. Well, guess who approached the record? Lurie, who watched Doug Pederson win a championship in 2017 and fired him three years later. Here comes Sirianni, only a year later, losing his players in a swirl of horrendous football, madness, dramatic coaching changes and blame-tossing. Teams lose their way in this league. Not a team that lost the big game to Kansas City, 38-35, and a team that looked uniquely prepared to storm February.
What happened? “Obviously, we’re in a big slide. Any time that’s the case, I always look at myself first,” Sirianni said after the final loss. “I didn’t do a good enough job. We couldn’t get out of the rut. All we have to do is look at ourselves in the mirror. When you start 10-1 and expectations were high, we fell into a skid. I will look at everything we’re doing.”
What if he has no time left, according to the Lurie watch? “That’s premature to talk about,” said Sirianni, tears forming in his eyes. “Coaches, players and staff — everybody is hurting. We’ll get into all of that. We’re hurting. It’s tough to go out the way we did. My mind is not there. My mind is on the locker room.”
It’s impossible in today’s NFL to keep Sirianni when all-time great coaches are waiting to be hired, with Belichick interviewing in Atlanta and Harbaugh with the Los Angeles Chargers. Think Belichick would prefer the Eagles over the Falcons? Or does he realize Hurts, whose injuries helped kill the team, might be difficult to deal with? Harbaugh doesn’t want Philadelphia pressure out of the controversial collegiate shoot. But maybe Vrabel does. Fact is, the new coach would have to create an immediate vision that fits Lurie and general manager Howie Roseman, whose approach is a daily grind of the Eagles. Will they dump Sirianni and bring in another man who wants things his way? If they maintain the current mold, they’ll exasperate the most hard-boiled fandom in sports. I’d hire Vrabel. People will talk about Belichick, as they will in Dallas and Georgia.
“Where you look should be incredibly broad and should include head-coaching experience. There is something to head-coaching experience," said Falcons CEO Rich McKay, among those interviewing Hoodie. “But it has to be the right head-coaching experience. That is not so easy to find, because it's not been easy for me to find over the years. I think, if you find one, should you consider it? Absolutely. Why wouldn't you?”
Not that Mayfield has anything to worry about, now that he’s moving into the final eight with the Bucs. He was signed last spring after failures with the Browns and Carolina Panthers, with nothing in mind except his cheap status. You might recall someone named Tom Brady. He won a Super Bowl in 2020 and decided he was finished last year, but not without leaving a $35 million cap hit. Mayfield did earn incentives to $8.5 million and wasn’t assured a starting position, having to beat out Kyle Trask in training camp.
Now he’ll face Jared Goff, another restored hero, this weekend in Detroit. Who thought he would keep his cool and bring together the team with leadership? Bucs coach Todd Bowles knew Mayfield was the polar opposite of Brady, the G.O.A.T. “Well, he’s not Tom,” he said. “He wasn’t trying to be Tom. You’re not going to replace Tom, ever — nobody is. He’s a legend, he’ll go down in the Hall of Fame.”
He just decided to be Baker Mayfield, the stud who turned us on at Oklahoma in the day. “That's just honestly how I've always been,” he said. “Be involved with the team, be one of the guys. (As a) quarterback, you get a lot of the press, but you've got to get down and dirty with the guys. You've got to understand that you're in the process with them. Everything needs to feel involved. I've talked about how a quarterback's job is to elevate the people around him, and that's also to make them feel like everybody is a leader. Everybody has a role here.”
His role is all-encompassing. He threw for touchdowns of 56, 44 and 23 yards, giving him 31 for the season. “It’s meant the world to me just to be able to be in a stable place, to be the best version of myself (and) do what they’ve enabled me to do,” Mayfield said. “The organization, the staff, our locker room — it’s just a special place, so I’ve truly appreciated it.”
Dan Campbell and the Lions will be favored at home, but Bowles’ defense is nasty. “Knowing the pieces we have, knowing that you don't have to do anything special — do your job at the highest level you can, you don't have to be Superman — the rest will take care of itself,” Mayfield said. “Luckily, we got bailed out by the defense and special teams, but it's time for us (offensively) to carry our weight and improve. What better time than now in the playoffs?”
Seems he’ll be paid massively well again, either by the Bucs or another team. This time, he won’t be moving his life into a football field with bathrooms and food stands. He wanted to film one last Progressive commercial when he left Cleveland. Naturally, he was told no. “I thought it would be an idea to do a moving campaign, because I think everybody can relate that moving is zero fun, I don’t care who you are,” he said. “I think that’s a missed opportunity.”
The real fun is elsewhere. He’s two victories from a Super Bowl, an event Nick Sirianni might never see again.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.