Most of us have probably seen or experienced a time at their job where a nominal leader, perhaps in their department, perhaps in another, had a successful team but brought nothing to the table as a leader. I’m not talking about a toxic situation like the kind who coast off of and take credit for the work of others; or a Peter Principle situation where someone with no management skills is promoted to a management role because they were really good at the role below it. Those are their own kind of problems.
I’m talking about the kind that do actually get the job done, but not by actually leading. The kind that love to talk but don’t really say anything of substance; the kind that can command a room but don’t affect it. There’s a spectrum with one end being people who are nominally leaders because of their job title, and at the other people who have their job title because they are actual leaders.
After yet another come-to-Jesus type meeting involving nominal leaders of the Eagles, it sure seems like the NovaCare complex has a deep rooted leadership problem.
Last season Brandon Graham let it slip that the Jalen Hurts-AJ Brown relationship was broken.
I know that 1 is trying. And I mean, 11 could be a little better with how he responds to things. And they was friends before this, it’s like man… but things have changed. And I understand that because life happens. But we got to, if the business side we got to make sure we don’t let the personal get in the way of the business. And that’s what we need to do better. As right now, because we know it’s an issue. Everyone’s saying some things, but we need to be able to talk things out as men, you know what I’m saying? And but we need to let personal stuff go let’s get right for this game. Because man, it’s like a lot of stuff. Most of the time it’s just a conversation that just needed to be had. But the person with the problem has got to want to talk to the others.
Graham would walk back his comments after they blew up, but not completely, as he still admitted there was a problem. Emphasis mine.
“I made a mistake and I assumed that it was something that it wasn’t,” Graham told ESPN. “I just want to win so bad that I don’t just want to use the media when we need to talk about something and we can fix the problem ourselves. I didn’t add to it in a good light, so that’s my bad.
“I just assumed, and it made me out to look even worse because I had it all wrong and now people are going to run with that part. I really just want to win, man, and I want brothers to be able to just hash it out.”
Clearly something needed to be talked about and hashed out.
Two months before that, during their Week 5 bye, the offensive leaders met with Nick Sirianni to air out some grievances, one of which being the relationship between the quarterback and head coach. For the rest of the regular season they averaged 29 points per game, and of course won the Super Bowl.
But here we are again in early October and we’ve already had one leadership meeting, with the issues between the QB and the WR not fully resolved from last year.
No relationship that has an hours long meeting with a mediator is a good one. That’s usually called couples therapy or marriage counseling. Hopefully this relationship is able to be repaired, because the way that the Eagles have structured their contracts it would be extremely damaging to the cap for them to trade or cut Brown, to say nothing of the on-field loss.
It’s good that the players have and are taking accountability and talking amongst themselves, but it is ultimately Nick Sirianni’s job to fix it. You’re either coaching it or allowing it to happen.
It’s also Nick Sirianni’s job to fix his broken offense. The team might need another meeting on that.
Sirianni has been down roads like this before. To his credit, he’s gotten the job done. As a rookie head coach and play caller he realized that he was in over his head balancing both roles and handed off play calling duties to Shane Steichen, which turned out to be a brilliant move. After the disastrous end to the 2023 season he listened to his players and toned down his overexcited personality. He listened and adjusted last year as well. With the bye not for another four weeks, another offensive leader meeting to fix the offense is probably needed during the mini-bye after Thursday. Time to stop allowing it happen and start leading.
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