Eagles coach, Jamestown native recalls lessons learned during career

The NFL moves fast, but not during this early August morning as Sirianni talked about the head coaches he had worked for during his journey from Mount Union (Ohio) to leading the Eagles to last year’s NFC title.

But it included an admission about growing up in Jamestown.

“You know, not a favorite thing for me to say in The Buffalo News,“ Sirianni said. “But I was a Steelers fan growing up.”

Understandable, really. Sirianni, 42, worked his way through middle school and high school in the mid-to-late 1990s, when the Bills majored in going 10-6 and losing in the wild-card round and the Steelers were reaching three AFC championship games (one win).

Because his father, Fran, was a high school coach, the Sirianni family’s football weekend revolved around Friday night games and Sunday afternoon game-plan sessions.

Sirianni’s Eagles, who have the NFC’s best record at 9-1, host the Buffalo Bills on Sunday, his first time as a head coach facing his home-region team.

“We didn’t go to a lot of Bills games but I do value the relationships that I’ve formed with guys like (former Bills players) Frank Reich and Pete Metzelaars, and how cool my friends thought it was when I was working with those guys,” Sirianni said.

Sirianni will appear really cool to his friends Sunday when he faces the Bills. Throughout his coaching journey, from playing for his father in high school to working for Reich in Indianapolis, Sirianni leaned on his mentors to teach him, challenge him and support him.

Fran Sirianni was the coach at Southwestern Central for nine years. Each of his three sons – Mike, Jay and Nick – followed their father into coaching.

“He’s the biggest influence I’ve had,” Nick said. “Just working hard if you want to accomplish something and I find myself thinking about the things he would say and I use those all of the time. He would always tell me, ‘From every place you go, take a little something that – make sure you write it down to form your own coaching philosophy.’ I’ve always taken that with me from each place I’ve went to.

“There are just so many things that happen when you grow up in a household like that and have parents like that.”

Nick graduated from high school in 1999 and joined the Division III powerhouse at Mount Union; his brother Jay was on the school’s 1996 national title team.

Sirianni won three national championships as a receiver for Mount Union and started his coaching career for the Purple Raiders in 2004 … coaching defensive backs. Kehres won 11 national titles from 1986-2012.

“He was tough on us, no matter if you were coaching for him or playing for him,” Sirianni said. “The biggest thing I take from Coach Kehres is accountability. When you get together with the guys that used to play for him, the stories you talk about are the times when he really pushed you. He wanted to hold us to a high, high standard.”

Sirianni coached the receivers for Division II Indiana University (Pa.) from 2006-08 for coach Lou Tepper, whose career included being the head coach at Illinois and was capped by three years on the University at Buffalo staff (2012-14).

IUP went 25-7 in Sirianni’s three years and made one playoff appearance.

“I really enjoyed being around him,” Sirianni said. “Really good man, really high detail and a lot with culture. He put a lot of time coaching the culture, which I was always impressed by. I felt like I went from Mount Union to another really good program where winning was the standard.

“I was almost in football fantasyland for those y ears, not losing very many games at Mount Union and not losing many games at IUP. You really learn what it takes to win and win consistently.”

Exercise helped create Sirianni’s NFL break. During summers in the Jamestown area, he would work out at the same YMCA as Haley, who was then the Chicago Bears’ receivers coach and had a vacation home in the area. When Haley was hired by the Kansas City Chiefs in 2009, he tabbed Sirianni to be an offensive quality control coach.

The Chiefs went 4-12, 10-6 and 5-8 under Haley. Sirianni moved from quality control to assistant quarterbacks, back to quality control and finally, to receivers in 2012 under new coach Romeo Crennel.

“I would just watch how Todd went about his business prepping for a game,” Sirianni said. “What I really learned a lot from Todd is how good he was with coaching the wide receiver position and even though he was the head coach, he spent a lot of time there.

“The detail he put into the passing game and also offensive and defensive football, I really, really valued the way he taught the fundamentals.”

Sirianni’s season as an assistant quarterbacks coach in 2010 was a step up … kind of.

“I was still doing a lot of quality control stuff because there wasn’t a quality control coach so that fell on me,” he said. “That was tough because I had to do the job of two guys. (Offensive coordinator Charlie Weis) was very generous to me and saw that I did a good job and he let me run meetings for the quarterbacks.”

Crennel went 2-1 as the interim coach and got the full-time job in 2012 and moved Sirianni to receivers coach, his first time leading a position group.

“I really thought he had a good way about him and could stay calm in stressful situations,” Sirianni said. “I always admired his defensive philosophy and how he game-planned. I have just always thought very highly of him as a coach and the way he connected with players.”

Crennel hired West Seneca native Brian Daboll as his offensive coordinator.

“I was (Daboll’s) receivers coach so I learned a lot about defensive football that really helped me become a better coach offensively,” Sirianni said. “We weren’t a very good team, but we were good in the run game.”

The Chiefs went 2-14, Crennel was fired and new coach Andy Reid didn’t retain Sirianni.

Upon his hiring as the Chargers’ coach, McCoy hired Sirianni, who ended up spending five years with the team under McCoy and Anthony Lynn.

Sirianni rose from quality control in 2013 to quarterbacks and receivers for two years apiece. The Chargers was where he first connected with Reich (’14). But the big career development was coaching Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers.

“When you have to coach Philip Rivers, you have to dig and claw and scratch and go to all ends of the earth to figure out something you’re going to tell him that he hasn’t heard and it’s going to help him on Sunday,” Sirianni said. “I really grew there. You could tell when you gave him something that helped him and you could tell when he had already uncovered something before. You really realize how much harder you have to work just to help them.”

The Chargers went 9-7, 9-7, 4-12 and 5-11 under McCoy.

Sirianni was retained by Lynn for the 2017 season and moved to receivers coach. The Chargers went 9-7 and the season allowed Sirianni to meld the knowledge gained coaching quarterbacks to his new post.

“It’s known to people that the stepping stone to being a coordinator is as a quarterbacks coach, but the path I’ve seen that’s been really beneficial is when you have the understanding of what both sides are looking at,” Sirianni said. “Coaching the quarterbacks helped me become a better wide receivers coach and vice versa.

“For example, when you’re teaching the receiver how to get open, there are route disciplines you have to follow to be where the quarterback is expecting you to be or to run a clear-out (route), that’s really important. That’s a real complement for each.”

Reich, the former Bills quarterback, was the Chargers’ offensive coordinator in 2014-15, moved to Philadelphia in the same role in 2016-17 and was hired as Indianapolis’ head coach.

Reich made Sirianni the Colts’ offensive coordinator; Reich would call the plays.

“Frank was the best of all the guys about just establishing a culture and establishing relationships,” Sirianni said. “I always think of Frank like a big brother so I would definitely say the people that shaped me the most in coaching are my dad, Coach Kehres and Frank and I would also put (former Bills assistant) Brian Daboll in there and the year I spent with him in Kansas City.

“Not only was Frank a mentor to me, but him and I are close. I just respect him as a coach and respect him as a man.”

Three years with the Colts, including one with Rivers as the quarterback, led to Sirianni being hired by the Eagles after the 2020 season.

Sirianni is 32-12 in the regular season, a team-record .727 winning rate, using the lessons learned from his father, Kehres, Reich – all of the coaches he worked for.

“He just has a great way of connecting with the players,” Eagles tight end Dallas Goedert said of Sirianni during camp. “He finds a way to figure out who we are and know us and he’s the most detail-oriented coach I’ve ever seen. He makes sure we’re in the right place at the right time.”