Zak Keefer

2 months ago | nytimes.com | Zak Keefer

NEW ORLEANS - Nick Sirianni leaned back, stretched his arms across the aluminum bench on the Philadelphia Eagles' sideline and nodded his head back and forth. The feistiest coach in football was ... chilling? Ten minutes before kickoff in the Super Bowl? "I wanted the players to see me," he said later as he made his way to the Eagles' locker room following Philadelphia's 40-22 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs.

2 months ago | nytimes.com | Zak Keefer

NEW ORLEANS - A more fragile team would have folded. It wouldn't have made it back here, because it wouldn't have been able to weather the series of storms this Philadelphia Eagles franchise faced along the way. And it wouldn't have halted history on the sport's biggest stage. But these Eagles were different - defiant, even. And on Sunday night in Super Bowl LIX, they were utterly dominant.

2 months ago | nytimes.com | Zak Keefer

The screams startled everyone on the field - and everyone in the stands. It wasn't yet 9 in the morning and Nick Sirianni was livid. This was back in July 2019, midway through one of those early training camp practices that never seem to end. The sun was stifling, the crowd quiet, and Sirianni, then the Indianapolis Colts offensive coordinator, was steaming. His players looked tired and unprepared. Someone whiffed on a block. Someone dropped a pass. Someone ran the wrong route.

2 months ago | nytimes.com | Zak Keefer

NEW ORLEANS - Spring 1982. Sixteen seconds left in the NCAA final, and a skinny freshman from North Carolina buries a jumper that delivers a championship and changes his life. He showed up in New Orleans that week as Mike Jordan. He left as Michael. By that point, the sprawling steel building that provided the stage for Jordan's arrival into the national consciousness - the seven-year-old Louisiana Superdome - was used to gripping theater unfolding within its walls.

2 months ago | nytimes.com | Zak Keefer

He wore spandex sleeves, highlights in his hair and a diamond stud in his ear. He once called himself "the best kicker in history" and had the numbers to back it up. Before games, he used to slip a dollar bill under his wristband. "Because I was money," Mike Vanderjagt says. He'd chirp at coaches on the practice field - "Left half or right half?" - because simply splitting the uprights for an hour straight was too easy. "Boring," he called it.