How Eagles coach Nick Sirianni studied Warriors coach Steve Kerr to celebrate ‘joy’ amid scrutiny – The Athletic

PHILADELPHIA — Nick Sirianni pointed toward a television screen in the lobby of the Eagles’ facility showing DeVonta Smith making a highlight-worthy catch, but Sirianni was not fixated on the catch. He wanted to focus on excitement and celebrations. He sought joy.

Sirianni could have been pointing beyond the screen during this conversation on a December afternoon to emphasize his point. Follow the direction of his gesture, past the Eagles’ practice fields where Sirianni has coached for five years and past the other side of South Broad Street, where Sirianni celebrated a Super Bowl title during an epic parade last February, and you’d see the Philadelphia 76ers’ arena.

On that night, the Golden State Warriors visited Philadelphia. If you want to know why Sirianni repeats the term “joy” in everything from postgame locker room speeches to his public comments, if you want to know why you can’t walk throughout the Eagles’ facility without seeing images of players celebrating together and why there’s a video montage during Monday meetings spotlighting joy, it’s because of Steve Kerr — the coach across the street that evening.

“I attribute that a lot to Coach Kerr,” Sirianni explained.

Sirianni admires “sustained success” — a term he used after winning the Super Bowl last season and that looms ahead of the opening-round playoff game this weekend against the San Francisco 49ers for the fifth postseason appearance in five seasons  — and he’s tried to study cultures that have helped foster that success.

One that resonated was what Kerr implemented in Golden State. The Warriors won four titles and reached the championship six times in eight years. (It’s also a culture that Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie has said he admired.)

“I was really interested in Steve Kerr’s, and one of the things he talked about in his culture that I’ve read about …was just joy,” Sirianni said last season. “One thing I read: He made it a point of putting up pictures of the guys in the building, of that current team celebrating and really talking about their core values. … There are a ton of pictures and video boards of our guys doing those things. That’s inspired by Coach Kerr there.

“So we’ve had that with the video boards — you see those in the locker room — and the pictures. We started at the beginning of this year, showing some of the celebrations there when we recap the game. It’s a little quick highlight video of the guys talking and showing our culture. Our tough, detailed, together culture. We like to point those things out. Just like we like to point out things from the game, whether mistakes or good things, and how we go over that, we thought that it would be good to do that same thing with culture points.”

Saquon Barkley’s famous backward leap is one of the photos Nick Sirianni keeps around to remind players of joy. (Elsa / Getty Images)

Across the street, Kerr was told about the connection and smiled. The two have never met. They’ve never spoken. But he appreciated how a Super Bowl-winning coach pinpointed “joy,” because it’s central to Kerr’s identity as a coach.

“I talk about it, but I want the players to feel it,” Kerr told The Athletic. “I don’t want them to have to think, ‘Oh, joy is a value of ours.’ It has to come alive. It has to be authentic and real. And I think Steph Curry sets a tone in that regard. He’s such a joyful player that it came pretty naturally, but it is a value of mine — my own — that I brought to the team that I felt like it was a big part of who I am, and what I value, and I wanted the team to feel that reflection.”

The Eagles’ celebration photos are notable for the intentionality. There could be photos of Saquon Barkley’s backward leap or Jalen Hurts’ pass to Smith for “the Dagger” in the Super Bowl or Cooper DeJean’s pick-six. Sirianni reminds players in the rotunda outside the locker room of the team celebrating together. Sirianni figures if a team values connection, it must be personified and not just preached.

“That was a huge one,” offensive tackle Jordan Mailata said. “Guys achieving greatness, and guys celebrating. …Every game, there’s moments of joy together on film, guys celebrating together.”

The images are meant to reinforce the values. In Sirianni’s office, he keeps photos of Kenneth Gainwell and Jahan Dotson getting stopped short of the goal line in Super Bowls. It would seem odd to focus on those plays until you realize that the players are not reaching the ball toward the goal line in a risky manner — a fundamental that Sirianni emphasizes in ball security meetings.

If done correctly, these images translate to the way the Eagles practice and play. Otherwise, they’re merely office decorations ready to be disposed of during the next remodeling.

“You can’t just write it on a wall — you write ‘joy,’ or whatever your value is. You write it on a wall, it doesn’t do anything,” Kerr said. “The players have to feel it. It has to be authentic.”

Before he started coaching in the NBA, Kerr visited Pete Carroll with the Seattle Seahawks. He wanted to learn about Carroll’s culture to buoy what he developed playing under iconic coaches such as Phil Jackson, Gregg Popovich and Lute Olson. After a long day, Carroll told Kerr to return to the hotel and “think about your life — not Phil’s, not Pop’s — your life. And what are the most important values in your life, from your parents, your upbringing?”

“I came in the next day, and I had a list of things that were really important to me,” Kerr said. “And we whittled them down to four. And ‘joy’ was one of the big ones, and another one is competition. And so, to me, what our program has really been based on over the decade-plus is the balance of competitiveness and joy. A lot of people think those things aren’t compatible, but I think the opposite. I think they feed into each other.”

Nick Sirianni points to former Warriors teammates Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry as an example of players playing with joy. (Alonzo Adams / Imagn Images)

In 2023, one year after the Eagles reached the Super Bowl, the Eagles suffered a late-season collapse that incited major staff changes. It also prompted Sirianni to re-evaluate his culture, from his core values to how he approached the job. During an offseason when Sirianni was thought to be on the hot seat, he said he felt “joy.” It was the first time he had articulated it in that way, and he explained: “We know that it’s not easy and nobody in the NFL has it easy, and everybody is cutthroat … We are, too. We want to go win, and that’s the main goal. You don’t get to have the joy of being a coach if you don’t win, right? But I do, I’m finding that joy in it. And that makes it lighter on your burden.”

It would be one thing if this were merely an offseason talking point, but it was applied throughout the 2024 season — one in which the Eagles finished with the Lombardi Trophy.

That run, and the way Sirianni interspersed joy into the team’s identity, has carried into this season. After the Eagles’ Week 14 win over the Las Vegas Raiders broke a three-game losing streak and quieted intense scrutiny on the team, Sirianni made joy the focal point of his postgame message. 

We had that joy and confidence. What a great example of, you control your joy. You control your confidence. What a great lesson for life. Nobody else.

Even before December, Sirianni seemed to guard against the burden of defending a Super Bowl crown by insisting the team felt joy in victories. If the Eagles did not play to the optimum level or they were bound to encounter criticism for underperformance, Sirianni made clear to the team — and to himself, for that matter — that the Eagles must award points for wins. Harping on the negative after wins makes for a “miserable existence.” When Sirianni is his most authentic self, the joy for his job is evident. When he’s staid and mellowed, he appears like a different person — almost burdened by the scrutiny and sapped of the joy that he demands from those around him.

“If you’re going to take away points when you lose, you got to give yourself points for wins, and you got to enjoy it,” Sirianni said. “You’re doing all these things because you love it, you’re doing all these things so you can go out there and be at your best. You’re doing all these things that we do throughout a week to continue to get better, and you have to be able to celebrate that when you win. I think we got a lot better feel of that than we have had in the past.”

Kerr, who is an NFL fan, has observed Sirianni while Sirianni admired him from afar. He respected “not only the fact that (Sirianni is) a winning coach, but how he handles the media and fan angst.” Kerr watched the Eagles-Bears Black Friday game and could hear boos on television.

“Didn’t these guys just win the Super Bowl?” Kerr wondered.

“I see Nick on the sidelines, like, this is insane, but it is kind of what you sign up for when you get to Philly,” Kerr said. “And I think that Nick has handled that incredibly well, and it’s always harder to do when you’re faced with the scrutiny and criticism in a city like here. But I think, really, almost universally, because of social media, all coaches are facing some of that. So ignorance is bliss. Trying not to look at that stuff is important. But I’ve admired watching Nick and the success of the Eagles, and in the face of that intense heat, it’s really impressive.”

Kerr has neither coached nor played in Philadelphia, but he can understand expectations. Kerr has defended four titles as coach. Navigating success beats the alternative. It’s easier to find joy when there are more opportunities for joy. (As Jalen Hurts responded when asked about Sirianni’s emphasis: “Joy comes from winning.”)

For joy in each win, there is a slight difference between Kerr and Sirianni. In the NBA, there are 82 games. You must move on to the next one. In the NFL, Sirianni’s opportunities are less frequent, and the implications are greater.

“I’m always blown away by the NFL and just the importance of each and every game,” Kerr said. “You lose three in a row, and you’ve basically gone a month without winning a game. And (in the NBA) it’s different in that there’s so many games and so losses are … more routine. I mean, even the best teams lose, you know, quite a few games every year. So, to me, the way I see it, the joy has to be there when you’re losing. It shouldn’t feel that different at practice the day after a loss than it does the day after a win. The consistency of that value is important to me.”

When Sirianni thinks of the joy from Kerr’s Warriors, his mind shifts to Curry and Klay Thompson celebrating together after an electric 3-pointer, the same way they would if they were in a schoolyard. Sirianni is trying to mimic that in Philadelphia. Zack Baun said last month that Sirianni’s emphasis on joy has been prioritized as a late-season message with a focus on the purity of their sport. Sirianni is the son and brother of a high school coach. He has another brother who coaches Division III. Watch the field an hour after the Eagles win and you might see Sirianni playing catch with his children.

“Just remembering why we play the sport, and money aside, playing that since we were kids, and joy we had when we were playing as kids and hanging out with our friends, and I feel like it’s definitely shifted the way we approach practice, the tough times of being in the league,” Baun said.

One expression Sirianni shared with The Athletic, which he repeated in a news conference two weeks later: “You can go into a building and say, ‘Man, I’ve got to go to work today,’ or, ‘Man, I get to go to work today.’” This distinction is important for Sirianni, and it’s part of why Kerr’s values resonated so much with him. It will only work if he displays what he demands.

“That joy is part of it. In professional football, there are all these pressures, and there’s all these ups and downs and everything like this, but we got into this game because we loved it,” Sirianni said. “I think that’s a really important thing. I got into this through the grace of God, doing something I love for a living. I think that in the world, you can let things beat you down a lot and not really give knowledge to all the things that you have going on that are really good. I think that’s just part of it. I think that’s just a healthy way to live, it’s healthy for your life, and it’s healthy for a football team.”

Sirianni studied other coaches and implemented different ideas, molding them with his own values. Then he had success with them. And now other coaches are implementing them. Boston Bruins coach Marco Sturm recently said he spent time this offseason studying Sirianni. There are Sirianni philosophies interspersed in the lexicon of coaches in other sports — just as Sirianni looked to Kerr to build his own approach.

“I think that’s cool that he’s been able to help me without even knowing each other,” Sirianni said. “And hopefully I can give that same presence to other coaches.”