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Nick Sirianni leaned against a wall in a Lincoln Financial Field hallway, and as the Eagles coach recounted his speech from the night before to his team, he’d jogged his memory to pull a full prognosis on a horrific leg injury he suffered as a Mount Union sophomore 20 years ago.
He tore the muscle off the bone. He ripped every ligament in the ankle. He had compartment syndrome and a staph infection.
“Last night was about kind of the junk we’ve been through in our lives—so I kinda started it off with that story,” Sirianni told me. “And then I had them thinking about their stuff that they’ve been through in their lives. The point of it was I wanted them to think of something that happened in their life that they overcame, and it made them who they are today. Because all of us have that story. I told them my story. I wanted them to think of their story.
“And it was to say to them, It’s about keep going.”
The Eagles didn’t face quite the resistance from the 49ers in the NFC championship that Sirianni and his players expected when they gathered the night before at the team hotel.
Sunday’s game won’t be remembered as a classic. The Eagles won 31–7 over a Niners team that had both its quarterbacks—the third and fourth they’ve gone through this year—go down in-game. It was 21–7 at the half after an unsightly mistake by Josh Johnson broke the game open in the final minute of the first half. A Johnson concussion two and a half minutes into the second half effectively ended the game.
But for Sirianni and his players, Sunday’s game be remembered for how it served as another symbol of just how tough-minded this team has become. The Eagles ran the ball in the red zone, tackled exceptionally well, and leaned on their identity of dominating the lines of scrimmage on offense and defense. They were, in short, unapologetically themselves, a reflection, as Sirianni said, of where they’ve been and where they’re going.
And where they’re going next is Super Bowl LVII in Phoenix.
