How Nick Sirianni processes losing and why he's grateful for it

Sirianni is no stranger to adversity and this season seems to have a lot of it.

By Reuben Frank • Published October 16, 2025

Nick Sirianni believes that players and coaches grow from adversity. He goes as far as saying he’s thankful for it.

Thankful for the losses. Thankful for the collapses. Thankful for the misery.

And for the most successful coach in modern Eagles history, he’s had his share.

The 2-5 start in 2021. The 2023 catastrophe. The 2-2 start a year ago. Back-to-back ugly losses last week.

So far, the Eagles have responded each time. They followed that 2-5 start by going 6-2 in their next eight games. They followed that 2023 collapse and 2-2 start last year with a Super Bowl championship.

Sirianni believes in adversity as a growth opportunity, and that’s what he’s preaching this week as the Eagles try to rebound vs. the Vikings.

"Adversities are going to happen,” Sirianni said Wednesday. "They happen for every team in the NFL. They happen for every team. They happen for every person. You think back on your old experiences, you look back at adversities that we've had.

"I'm thankful for those. Obviously, this is a new year and new things, but I'm thankful for '23. I'm thankful for how '24 started off because it put us in a position to do what we ultimately wanted to accomplish, our goal last year. That is a mindset that is really critical to have, that adversity that you go through makes you stronger if you allow it to.”

Sirianni is constantly preaching to his players that everybody – not just in football, not just in sports, but everybody – is going to be faced with adversity. And what defines you isn’t the adversity but how you deal with it and how you grow from it.

But he said Wednesday it’s not just the players who can learn from their failures but the other coaches and himself as well.

"Oh, heck yeah,” he said. "Oh, heck yeah. … A lot of times, you can look back and say, 'I went through this for this,' and it's clear (how you grow from it). Sometimes it's not clear. But adversity makes you dig down even deeper. 

"This is a hungry football team and a hungry coaching staff, and I know I'm hungry,” he said. "There are some times that adversity makes you reach down deeper. To me, it's like you can have two mindsets there. You can have a mindset of defeat, or you can have a mindset of get up and fix and identify issues and identify strengths and get better from it. 

"That doesn't mean that you're perfect and you don't have those moments of, 'Man, what are we going to do here?' But if you're always constantly getting up over and over again in your life, that's just your way, that's your mindset, and that's what we try to preach and that's what we talk about and that's what I see our team and our coaches and all of us doing.”

The Eagles could certainly use a healthy dose of growth right about now.

In the span of five days, they blew a 14-point 4th-quarter lead at home for only the sixth time in franchise history and lost to the Broncos and then got blanked 14-0 in the second half against the Giants at MetLife on Thursday night. 

According to the ESPN game probability calculator, the Eagles had a 95.4 percent chance to beat the Broncos as of the middle of the third quarter and a 77 percent chance to beat the Giants in the middle of the second quarter.

They lost both, the first time they’ve lost consecutive games since the 2023 collapse nearly two years ago and including the win in Tampa the first time they’ve been outscored by double digits in the second half of three straight games. 

"Confidence comes from past experiences and knowing that you've been there,” he’said. "You've done these things before.”

https://www.nbcsportsphiladelphia.com/nfl/philadelphia-eagles/nick-sirianni-adversity-losses/690043/

This is absolutely fine and valid as long as this team responds positively to the adversity. We’ve seen them handle it in the past but we’ve also seen them fall apart in 2023. They need to use all of their experiences right now to over come this early season struggle.

4 minutes ago, UK_EaglesFan89 said:

This is absolutely fine and valid as long as this team responds positively to the adversity. We’ve seen them handle it in the past but we’ve also seen them fall apart in 2023. They need to use all of their experiences right now to over come this early season struggle.

Maybe having been through it before will help them better navigate it this time to avoid a colossal collapse like we saw in 2023. Maybe.

But for the record, I don't feel this team is on the verge of a colossal collapse again. Sure hope I'm not wrong.

12 minutes ago, time2rock said:

Maybe having been through it before will help them better navigate it this time to avoid a colossal collapse like we saw in 2023. Maybe.

But for the record, I don't feel this team is on the verge of a colossal collapse again. Sure hope I'm not wrong.

See I do feel like this team is on the verge of another colossal collapse. The vibes fell off, the team hasn’t played well and it just all feels like a real mess. A win can correct some of that, a very good win and performance can certainly make us fans feel different. I’m just not sure they’ve got it in them.