The Nick Sirianni Legend Continues To Grow, As Word On The Street Is He Showed His Eagles Team The End Rap Battle From "8 Mile" To Get Them Fired Up Before Yesterday's Dismantling Of The Giants
This is the kind of shit we the betting public needs to know before kick-off.
Fuck the injury report. I need to know if the upstart coach of the best team in the league is showing literal fight music to his squad before they blow through the locker room doors and pour out onto the field.
Had I known this, there's zero chance I would have took the points and the G-men yesterday, who looked like they were sleepwalking through that game for the first 3 quarters.
Regardless, thanks for this tid bit of info John Clark. Even if it's after the fact. As if Nick Sirianni wasn't growing on me already, with all his swag, the fact he actually shows personality on the sidelines and doesn't stand there like an Easter Island statue all game (shout out Jim Caldwell), and well, you know, the whole Italian thing.
Now, come to find out he's clearly a big Marshall Mathers fan, who is around our age, and obviously grew up at a time when the film 8-Mile had a big impact on his life. He really is "just like us".
Everybody who's seen the movie knows, when those first few pitched-down Herbie Hancock drum kicks from "Shook Ones II" come in, the little hairs on the back of your neck stand straight up, and your body gets chills. Yes, there's something about the Mobb Deep OG version, but Eminem's freestyle, the cinematography of that scene in The Shelter, and of course, his cipher over the beat really made it his own.
I mean, this movie is (somehow) now 20 years old, and this scene is still as spine-tingling as it was back in 2002.
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Unreal.
Is there any surprise whatsoever the Eagles absolutely dismantled the Giants yesterday after hearing coach Sirianni tell them they weren't shit, nobody thinks their remarkable regular season means shit, and then dropping that video on them?
Only tough part now is how do you follow that up for next week's NFC Championship vs. the 49ers?
Really tough not to like this guy.
p.s.- it's really hard not to like the guy when you try to dig up a little bit about his background before blogging about him so you don't sound like a horse's ass, and you come to find out he basically worships Belichick and went out of his way a couple years ago to line up joint practices with his Eagles and Patriots so that some of Bill's wisdom would hopefully rub off on him.
CBS Sports - "This is the best in the business ever, ever to coach. I mean, this is the best NFL coach ever," Sirianni said. "So really look forward to learning from him. Just like we watch tape of guys, just like we throw on the tape and say, 'Hey, look how you watch this guy run this route, look how to read this play' of players in the NFL. I'll do the same thing here with Coach Belichick."
"I think you learn just from being around them, people that are really good at their job," Sirianni said to reporters prior to the Philadelphia Eagles joint practice with the Patriots on Tuesday. "I'm not looking for something in particular, but I'm always observing, right. I'm always observing guys that are good at those things.
"So I just admire the way he prepares. I admire the way he gets his guys ready, how he motivates his guys. Those are things -- you see little things like that, so it's good to be around him. Most of my attention, obviously, it better be, right, is around our football team, but you still get to learn from guys that you're around."
Sirianni has certainly learned the concept of efficiency and discipline through Belichick. The Eagles' first-team unit didn't commit a penalty in the first preseason game and were fundamentally sound in the exhibition opener, similar toward how they looked in training camp practices over the first three weeks.
What makes me love this guy, even more, is his adherence to, and spreading the Gospel of "Getting Better 1% Every Day". A mantra and belief system I learned from our buddy Chris Ninkik.
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The Eagles continue Sirianni's mantra of getting 1% better every day. The concept is Belichick-esque, as the Eagles seek to be a team that gets the most out of every player on its roster.
Fucking love it.
p.p.s. - what makes you love the guy even more, is learning that he and his two brothers all ended up playing at a small D3 school in rural Ohio, Mount Union, thanks to his mom taking a liking to a nice old lady at a college fair near their hometown at St. Bonaventure.
Canton Rep - Three Sirianna brothers played college football for the Mount Union Purple Raiders. It would be "zero Sirianni brothers" if not for their mom.
Oldest brother Mike paved the way as a receiver on Mount Union's first national championship team, in 1993.
Mount Union did not exist on Mike's radar when he played for his father, Fran, at Southwestern Central High School in Jamestown, New York, a three-hour drive from Alliance, Ohio.
"My mom was at a college fair at St. Bonaventure University, and there was a lady there representing Mount Union," Mike recalls. "Mom liked the lady and told me, 'Why don't you visit?'
"She told me where it was and I said, 'Ohio? Are you kidding me?' But she convinced me to visit, and I liked it. I kind of wound up recruiting them, rather than the other way around."
Amazing because I can see my own mother pulling this and I'm pretty sure a handful of my friends ended up at random schools throughout the northeast because of this same tactic.
Nick's brothers are also football lifers and still apart of the program. Something you love to see.
Mike thrived as a Mount Union player and then spent two years on head coach Larry Kehres' staff. He landed a college head coaching job with the Washington & Jefferson Presidents the year the youngest brother, Nick, enrolled at Mount Union.
Mike is still the "W & J" head coach 20-plus years later. His program scrimmages Mount Union's varsity in addition to facing the Purple Raiders in two junior varsity games.
Middle brother Jay is the tallest of the siblings, at 6-foot-6. He followed Mike to Mount Union with a focus on basketball, although he also had been a quarterback for his dad back home. Midway through his college days, Jay joined the football team, at Kehres' request, as a backup quarterback.
Jay was a member of Mount Union's 1996 national title team. He became Southwestern Central's head football coach and won New York state championships in 2008 and '09.
Sounds like an awesome football family. His parents should be proud of all their boys.
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