Nick Sirianni is Good Again

Happy Tuesday! Underrated day of the week. The tacos hit differently.

In today’s send:

• Nick Sirianni’s approval rating is sky-high lately. Funny what an eight-game winning streak can do.

• The Phillies’ approval ratings are still low from their early postseason exit. (And rightfully so.) But they did give fans a 95-win regular season and a rare division championship. We’ll check in on OnPattison’s countdown of the best Phils games of the year.

• Penn State’s carefully managed approval rating landed them an unexpected date with top-ranked Oregon in the Big Ten championship game.

Let’s discuss.

In the email today:

• 🥶 Cold Take Exposed: Guess We're Not Firing Sirianni, Eh?

• 🎄 Top 15 Phillies Games of 2024 - No. 15

• 🙄 Penn State's Path of Least Resistance Runs Them Smack Into Oregon

  • 📆 This Day in Philly Sports History

  • 📊 Poll

  • 🔗 Links

  • 📺 Coming Up

We write about all the teams here, but no one pretends that anyone pays much attention to anything other than what the Eagles are doing. They’re the lead story, every day, full stop.

Winners of eight in a row, 10-2, leading the NFC East by three games in the loss column…the Eagles are great copy.

With all of these wins come praise like this:

As Bill Parcells famously said, you are what your record says you are. Nick Sirianni is the toast of the town. Rightfully so!

Sirianni took the Eagles to the Super Bowl two seasons ago. And even the collapse last season ended in the playoffs. That’s probably more than the 49ers will be able to say this year.

But the headline tells you where we’re going with this. The Eagles got boat-raced in Tampa on September 29. The loss dropped the Birds to 2-2. The response to the tepid start to the season was typically measured and even keel.

Then the Eagles barely sneaked past the injury-plagued and generally talent-starved Cleveland Browns on October 13.

Sirianni did himself no favors by engaging with people in the aftermath, then holding an, um, unconventional presser.

But again…holy hell.

NFL stands for National Football League, but also is known to stand for Not For Long.

Sirianni is probably going to lose another game this season. The Eagles are nearly a two touchdown favorite this weekend against Carolina. They could lose that game.

For that matter, Sirianni could well make another confounding two-point conversion call, or misuse a timeout, or call a pass when a simple run seems like the obvious play.

From where we sit, though, it should be an awfully long time before anyone calls for Sirianni’s job. Because he’s making many of us look very foolish when we do it.

'Tis the season... for countdowns! Between now and New Year's Day, we'll rank the top 15 Phillies games of 2024 on OnPattison.com, and share some of the games in your faithful newsletter.

At number 15: April 16, 2024 - Ranger Suarez throws a complete game shutout

Ranger Suarez's numbers don't really tell the story of his season.

He finished the year 12-8 with a 3.46 ERA, a 1.20 WHIP, 145 strikeouts, and 41 walks in 150.2 innings. Not bad at all.

But early-season Suarez was special. The Philies lost his first start, on March 31 against Atlanta. But Ranger was credited with the win in his next nine games. By May 21, he was 9-0 in ten starts, with a 1.36 ERA and 0.79 WHIP in 66 innings. His ERA was still under 2.00 as late as June 29.

It was Cy Young-caliber stuff. Health issues derailed Suarez after the All-Star break, but his early-season run is legendary.

At the height of his powers, in April against a hapless Colorado Rockies squad, Ranger threw the second complete game shutout of his career. He walked just one batter and struck out eight in a 5-0 Phillies win.

Fittingly, Suarez fielded a ground ball with his trademark serenity to end the game. His final line: 9 IP, 7 H, 1 BB, 8 K, 112 pitches (79 strikes).

JT Realmuto and Bryce Harper backed up Suarez's performance with home runs, and Brandon Marsh helped out with some defense:

The Phils' overall record was just 10-8 after this, On Pattison's 15th-best game of the season. But the win proved to be the second of seven consecutive Phillies victories. The team was off and running.

Last week we covered how expertly Penn State had positioned themselves this season by piling up wins over unranked opponents while arguably superior teams around them fell by the wayside.

But a funny thing happened on the way to a quiet stroll to the NCAA College Football Playoff.

Until Ohio State — favored by anywhere from 20 to 23 points — lost to Michigan over the weekend, it was going to be Ohio State heading to Indianapolis to take on the #1 team in the country in the Big Ten title game.

Quite obviously, the chance to win a conference championship cannot be seen as bad news for the Nittany Lions. If you had offered this outcome to Penn State’s fans in August, they would have snapped your hand off grabbing it.

There are story lines here, but if we’re all being honest with each other, there is one statistic hanging over this game (and Penn State) like impending doom.

So this is a two true outcomes scenario for Franklin and for his team.

If Penn State wins this game, they take home the Big Ten championship for the first time since 2016. They stay in the conversation for a first round playoff bye. And Franklin gets to silence the critics (for a little while anyway).

But if Penn State loses to Oregon, the bye is gone and Franklin again faces probing questions about his ability to beat good teams.

Be careful what you wish for, they say. You might get it.

📆 This Day in Philly Sports History

Today’s the anniversary of Randall Cunningham’s third-down, 91-yard punt.

📊 Poll

Results from Monday:

The Eagles will need to keep their foot on the gas to catch Detroit for the top NFC playoff seed.

🔗 Links

• ⚾️ Rob Manfred isn’t finished coming up with new and innovative ways to ruin the National Pastime.

• ⬇️ UConn’s Hawaiian adventure nearly dropped them out of the AP Top 25.

• 🏈 The hit on Trevor Lawrence was ugly and there probably should still be a suspension, but fair play to Azeez Al-Shaair for publicly expressing regret.

• 🏀 James Harden joined Steph Curry as the only NBA players to hit 3,000 three-pointers.

📺 Coming Up

Games before our next send.

December 3, 2024

• Sixers at Hornets, 7:00 p.m. (NBC Sports Philadelphia)

Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow.

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