A lot can change in a year. A year ago, the Philadelphia Eagles collapsed down the stretch of the 2023 NFL season and got bested by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the Wild Card round. There were questions about Nick Sirianni’s future with the franchise and Jalen Hurts ability to lead the team to the top.
A year later, the Eagles are Super Bowl champions, Hurts is cemented as one of the best quarterbacks in franchise history and Sirianni is in line for a large contract extension. Now that the team has reached the ultimate goal, the head coach can look back on last season’s struggles with a newfound appreciation.
“I look back on last year and how last year ended and I’m grateful,” Sirianni said, via ESPN. “As crazy as this sounds, I’m grateful how last year ended because it shaped us to who we are today [with] the adversity of the beginning of the year and the adversity through the season, through injuries, through ups and downs, through everything,
“I think that when you embrace adversity, it does something to you, right? It does something to you personally, right? Each and every individual on that football team, the adversity does something to you, and it does something to you as a football team as well.
You learn a lot about a person — or a team — from how they handle adversity, and the Eagles couldn’t have handeled it better. They didn’t let the poor finish to the season or the incessant chirping of detractors and doubters break them. Instead, they looked inward, addressed some areas of need and came back better and stronger this season. They seemed to play with a certain chip on their shoulder all season that might not have been there if they didn’t suffer the heartbreak of last season.
The group used the adversity from last season as motivation, and it carried them all the way through the finish line. Now, they’ll be celebrating with the city during the second championship parade in the past seven years.
So just remember, things might seem bleak in the moment, but they can change quickly, and struggles in the moment could contribute to greater success down the road.