The Philadelphia Eagles suffered their first defeat of the season in Week 10 on Monday Night Football. The Washington Commanders went into Lincoln Financial Field with a strong game plan and executed it perfectly, leading to an upset win. Philadelphia looked like they were going to lose a second straight game as they went on the road to face the Indianapolis Colts in Week 11 and trailed for virtually the entire game.
Indianapolis scored on the first drive of the game and led by as many as 10 points, but the Eagles had an impressive final drive of the game to pull off a 17-16 victory.
This was an emotional game for Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni, who was the offensive coordinator from 2018-2020 with the Colts before taking over as Philadelphia’s head coach in 2021. He was part of Frank Reich’s staff after previously working together with the San Diego Chargers.
But, it wasn’t Reich who Sirianni was facing off against on Sunday afternoon. Reich was fired following the Colts’ Week 9 loss to the New England Patriots and replaced on an interim basis by Jeff Saturday.
It would be easy to imagine that was a little extra motivation added for Sirianni heading into the matchup against the Colts. He was not shy about sharing his feelings about the head coaching situation with the Colts and his relationship with Reich.
“I love Frank Reich. He’s one of the best damn football coaches I’ve ever been around… you don’t want to know what I think, if he should be here or not, you guys can probably imagine what I really think.”
Sirianni revealed that he did have some good conversations with players that were on the team when he was there. But, beating the Colts, especially in the fashion that they did, was the icing on the cake.
This was a game that Sirianni was looking forward to when the schedule came out as coaching against mentors is always a special experience. Sirianni was robbed of that opportunity because of decisions that the Colts made, making the win over Indianapolis more than your regular run-of-the-mill November victory.
