As Eagles' Nick Sirianni reaches Super Bowl, his brothers find success on parallel paths

Over the past 20 years, Mike Sirianni has quietly become one of the top coaches in college football. He's never had a losing season. Never lost back-to-back regular-season games. His win percentage (.807) ranks sixth among active head coaches with tenures of at least 100 games, ahead of Dabo Swinney (.805) and Nick Saban (.801).

"People are like, 'You have the (sixth)-highest win percentage in college football right now,' " he said. "And I’m like, 'Yeah, but I’m the third-best coach in my own family.' "

That would be behind middle brother Jay, who coached their high school alma mater to three New York state title games, winning two.

And behind youngest brother, Nick, who will of course make his Super Bowl debut when the Philadelphia Eagles face the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday.

"In my opinion, until Nick wins a Super Bowl, Jay’s got two state championships," Mike said. "So to me, I’m still voting him No. 1."

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With their little brother in the spotlight this week as head coach of the Eagles, Mike and Jay have been happy to cheer and watch from the periphery. It's hardly a surprise that all three of them went into coaching, given that their father, Fran, spent 34 years as a coach and teacher.

The twist is that each has found his way at a different level of football.

Success at different levels

Mike, 50, is the longtime head coach at Washington & Jefferson College, a Division III school south of Pittsburgh with a total enrollment of about 1,200 students. Jay, 46, spent a dozen years as the head football coach at Southwestern Central High School in Jamestown, New York, where he now coaches track and basketball. And Nick, 41, is the baby of the family and the NFL head coach.

"It’s really kind of unbelievable. We have to pinch ourselves every once in a while to make sure it’s real," Fran Sirianni said of his youngest reaching the Super Bowl.

"I think I’ve always said, to anybody who has asked, that the three of them are where they belong. They seem to relate to the athletes that they’re coaching."

Each of the Sirianni brothers has acknowledged getting into the business because of their dad. And all three of them played college football at the same Division III school, Mount Union, under legendary head coach Larry Kehres.

From there, the brothers' paths diverged – with fate and family circumstances yanking them in different directions.

Mike immediately settled in at the college level and has been the head coach at Washington & Jefferson since 2003, passing on possible moves early in his career to avoid moving his children while they were young. Jay returned home to Jamestown, teaching social studies and coaching football before stepping down in 2015 to spend more time watching his kids play sports. And Nick took a step down in title to get a shot in the NFL under then-Chiefs coach Todd Haley, whom he had gotten to know years earlier after repeated run-ins at a local YMCA.

"They're all intelligent guys. ... They're all good teachers," Kehres said. "They share a lot of the same ingredients, the same characteristics of their ability to be successful. It’s just that Nick’s getting all the attention."

As Nick climbed up the NFL coaching ranks, Mike and Jay found success and fulfillment in their own roles. Mike has a career record of 176-42 at Washington & Jefferson. Jay won two state championships at Southwestern Central by running spread and pro-style offensive systems, then reached a third title game running the near-opposite Wing-T.

Same titles, different jobs

There are moments now when it can feel like the brothers have completely different jobs with the same title. Nick has to deal with media scrutiny and stars with multi-million dollar contracts. Mike has to recruit. Jay spends more time placating parents than the other two combined.

"Let’s face it: As a high school coach, I’m the one that’s filling up the water bottles. I’m taping ankles. I’m washing the uniforms after a game," he added. "But that goes with the job, and every high school coach in America will tell you it’s worth it. Because it is."

There are similarities between their jobs too, of course. Nick said in a news conference earlier this season that he and Mike will diagram plays and send them back and forth. "People tease me all the time, 'Do you guys copy them?' " Mike said. "I’m like, 'Hell no, they copy us.' "

More commonly, the brothers will seek advice from one another on how to handle tricky situations – from a fourth down on the edge of field-goal range to tragedy off the field.

"Coaching is challenging at all levels," said Kehres, whose 332 career wins rank seventh in college football history. "If you’re good at it at the level you picked, if you get uprooted and placed in another place, you would figure it out. You would solve the problems, you would adapt to your environment and pretty soon you’d be successful again."

That's part of the reason why Kehres said, at least for now, he'd still pick Jay as the most accomplished coach among the Sirianni brothers. Even though he's coaching at the lowest level of the three, he's the only one who's won a championship.

Jay, meanwhile, chuckles when told of all the votes he's getting for family's best coach. Nick is the one in the Super Bowl. Little brother is wearing the coaching crown now.

"He’s got to be the best coach in the family," Jay said. "Now if he can win a Super Bowl running the Wing-T? Oh my gosh, he’d be the best coach in the history of everything."

Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on Twitter @Tom_Schad.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Nick Sirianni in Super Bowl 2023, but may not be best coach in family