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The hottest NFC East head coach seat entering Thursday night’s Cowboys–Giants game was not Mike McCarthy’s or Brian Daboll’s.
It belonged to the Eagles‘ Nick Sirianni, whose marginalization in Philadelphia’s gameday operation and game management errors have garnered significant attention and criticism despite his team’s 2-1 start.
The division’s pressure dynamic is unnervingly volatile, though.
Thursday morning it was Sirianni. By Friday at sunrise, either McCarthy or Daboll will be staring at a 1-3 record, in sole possession of last place in the division, and their tenuous job security will be leading the national talk shows.
The expectations are different for all three coaches respective to their situations.
Daboll needs to show progress in several areas: on offense as the new full-time play caller, in staff management after January’s exodus of coaches and in game management given last year’s 6-11 slide, to name a few.
At minimum, he needs to prevent the bottom from falling out in the media capital of the league.
McCarthy’s bar with “America’s Team” is higher.
Winning the NFC East with a plus-194-point differential last season wasn’t good enough, not after an embarrassing 48-32 home playoff loss to the Green Bay Packers. Dallas has to return to the playoffs and make a deep run.
This dynamic put way more pressure on McCarthy Thursday night than even Daboll. Because no one truly expected the Giants to win this game. They’d lost 13 of the last 14 against Dallas coming in, including six straight.
A Cowboys nosedive in the NFC standings would be unavoidably dramatic and disastrous.
Sirianni, meanwhile, is in an awkward spot in Philly.
He is no longer calling plays for the Eagles on offense, so he is more of a game-managing figurehead. And even when his team beat the New Orleans Saints on the road last Sunday, the main topic of conversation still was a Sirianni fourth-down decision and the coach’s overall contributions to the product on the field.
He’s facing all of this scrutiny despite taking the Eagles to the Super Bowl two seasons ago and falling short to the Kansas City Chiefs.
It doesn’t help any of these coaches that Bill Belichick, the greatest coach of all time, is a free agent prominently featured in national media daily.
This week, Belichick was asked on ESPN about the Cowboys’ struggles.
“I think there’s enough talent in Dallas to get things straightened out,” Belichick said, “but they’ve gotta look in the mirror and look each other in the eye and say we’re gonna do it.”
Two weeks ago, Belichick also was roaming the sidelines at Lincoln Financial Field as a member of ESPN’s broadcast team for the Eagles’ home-opening loss to the Atlanta Falcons.
As if there isn’t already enough pressure on Sirianni, knowing that Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie and GM Howie Roseman considered and checked in on Belichick this offseason when the head coach’s future was an open public question.
Belichick also has a strong affinity for the Giants organization where he won two Super Bowls as Bill Parcells’ defensive coordinator.
Noise about a possible Belichick Giant return is not as loud as the Cowboys and Eagles speculation in part because it is believed the Giants would have to change some significant parts of their operation for Belichick to be attracted to the job.
Not to mention they look more like a rebuild, and Belichick, 72, is more likely to inherit a good team that he can elevate rather than a bad team he has to restore from the ground up.
Still, the connection is there, and the noise will get louder in any of these three markets if the Cowboys, Giants or Eagles slide.
And considering Washington’s early 2-1 start and offensive excitement with rookie QB Jayden Daniels, there is a strong chance one of these franchises will falter more than just stubbing its toe.
Judging the NFL week-to-week can be dangerous. So much can change quickly. But the reality is the NFC East landscape is treacherous territory right now for McCarthy, Daboll and Sirianni.
And Thursday night was a critical chapter in determining who could end up losing this high-stakes game of musical chairs.
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