This is For The Win’s daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Did a friend recommend or forward this to you? If so, subscribe here. Have feedback? Leave your questions, comments and concerns through this brief reader survey! Now, here’s Mike Sykes.
Good morning, Winners! Welcome back to the Morning Win. Thanks so much for rocking with us today. We appreciate you giving us a bit of your time.
Folks, I hate to say it, but I think the conversation on Nick Sirianni has officially jumped the shark.
The coach finds himself under fire from the public again, but this time, it’s after a win. It’s not because his team didn’t play well (which they absolutely didn’t despite the win, btw!) or because of the weird decisions he made during the game (which there were plenty of!).
It’s because he brought his kids to his press conference after the game, which has somehow turned into this unconscionable “bush league” move. His kids are human shields from questioning now, I guess?
People seem to be arguing that Sirianni did this to ease tensions from the end of the game, when he was seen very obviously arguing with Eagles fans on the sidelines.
First of all, I must say, this has got to be the first time I’ve seen people defending the behavior of Eagles fans! Usually, everyone loves bringing up the whole Santa Claus thing from the 1960s that every Eagles fan must be held accountable for the rest of eternity. Those are the rules. But this is a new day, people. Eagles fans are finally in the right.
Anyway, I digress. Back to Sirianni.
Look, I don’t doubt that Sirianni thought bringing his kids in might make things a bit easier at the podium for him. The game against the Browns was unusually contentious both on and off the field. When that happens, we’ve seen athletes and coaches bring their kids to pressers before. Usually, people love this sort of thing. Sirianni himself has done it before.
It’s not the big deal people want to make it out to be. The kids don’t stop anyone from doing their jobs. They didn’t stop anyone from asking Sirianni any questions they wanted to ask. He was still questioned about the incident with the fans. He was still asked about the Eagles’ broken offense and the role he played in it. He still had to answer those questions like he normally would. Those kids didn’t interfere at all.
The kids were a non-story until the talking heads decided to make it one. Now, we’re talking about this instead of how badly the Eagles looked against the Browns. So, if that’s what Sirianni wanted, then it worked?
Ultimately, Nick Sirianni’s problem isn’t that his kids made an appearance at a press conference. It’s that his team has been pretty bad for the last calendar year, and he doesn’t have any good answers to why.
When we’re all ready to talk about that, we can finally have a reasonable conversation about the Eagles’ head coach in good faith.
Tua will return
Mike McDaniel said that Tua Tagovailoa “will not play this week” but is expected to return for the 2024 season.
https://twitter.com/JFowlerESPN/status/1845831870627418595
Usually, that’s great news to hear when somebody is injured. In this case? I’m not so sure that’s a good thing.
Tagovailoa has been out since suffering a concussion just a couple of weeks into the season. That’s the third known concussion Tagovailoa has had since 2022, when he said he once considered retirement after suffering through brutal head injuries that season. Despite his troublesome past with head injuries, however, he’s not considering retirement here.
None of us are in a position to tell Tagovailoa what he should be doing and how he should be living his life. Football is his livelihood. His decision to continue to play is one for him and his family to make alone. What we think doesn’t really matter.
But I can’t help but feel like we’ve entered into some pretty dangerous territory when it comes to Tagovailoa’s long-term health. He’ll play this season, obviously. And we have to wish him the best.
But, man, I hope he thinks long and hard this offseason about what his future might look like with football or otherwise.
Donte DiVincenzo is bringing spice to NYC
Usually, when big names are traded in sports it quite literally requires a lot of moving pieces. Donte DiVincenzo was one of those moving pieces in the Karl-Anthony Towns trade.
He was shipped to Minnesota along with Julius Randle and as a salary casualty in the deal. The money wouldn’t have worked otherwise. It’s a great trade on the Knicks side, but it also robbed us of the Nova Knicks that we were promised when the Mikal Bridges deal went through.
MORE ON THE KAT DEAL: Here are our trade grades for the Knicks-Timberwolves deal.
Nobody seems more miffed by that than DiVincenzo himself, who had a lot to say to the Knicks in the Timberwolves’ preseason game against New York. Here’s Bryan Kalbrosky with more:
“After the preseason game, DiVincenzo got into a heated exchange with Knicks assistant coach Rick Brunson. The coach is also the father of New York’s point guard Jalen Brunson, who attended college with DiVincenzo. The pair actually won two collegiate national championships playing alongside each other.
While we may never learn exactly what happened during the argument between DiVincenzo and his former assistant coach, there were some preceding incidents that perhaps led to the tension. For example, he also had a back-and-forth with his former head coach Tom Thibodeau.”
This is big New York energy from Donte. The Knicks are going to miss this. The Timberwolves are going to love it.
Quick hits: Things we learned from Week 6 … Caleb Williams is doing the thing … and more
— The Lions are plagiarizing … the Lions. And it’s still working really well, Christian D’Andrea writes in his latest recap column for Week 6 of the NFL season.
— Here’s Robert Zeglinski on Caleb Williams living up to the hype for the Bears this season and more from Week 6 around the league.
— Here’s Meg Hall with 13 celebrity sightings at Game 2 of the WNBA Finals.
— Here’s Charles Curtis on the Lions roasting the Cowboys stadium for being losers on Sunday.
— Speaking of the Cowboys, here’s Christian D’Andrea with the grossest QB performances of Week 6.
— Get to know Betnijah Laney-Hamilton, who absolutely dominated Game 2 for the Liberty.
That’s a wrap, folks. Thanks so much for reading today. We appreciate you. Have a fantastic Monday. Peace.
-Sykes ✌️