NEW ORLEANS — There are NFL coaches who make things hard for themselves, and then there is Nick Sirianni, who might as well assign himself to read James Joyce in Braille. It took him just minutes after the Philadelphia Eagles' 15-12 strange and exhilarating victory here Sunday over the Saints, just seconds after he had entered a Superdome conference room, to work himself into such a lather that he was on the verge of tears.

"I'm going to get emotional," he said at one point as he wiped his right eye with his right index finger. The whole game, the whole week, Sirianni's whole tenure with the Eagles — if you're looking for calm consistency in a coach, search somewhere else. Nothing is easy with this man. Nothing.

Six days ago, it was a late-game sequence against the Atlanta Falcons — passing on third-and-short, settling for a field goal — that had everyone wondering what Sirianni was thinking in big moments and why. Against the Saints, it was the whole damn game, 60 minutes during which he seemed to be making significant decisions by flipping a coin that had an infinite number of sides. Yet there was Sirianni after one of the wildest wins he's experienced with the Eagles, standing behind a lectern, beginning his press conference by embarking on a six-minute monologue about resilience and the difference between a victim mindset and a purpose mindset, announcing that every doubt or question or criticism aimed at his team was his to absorb. His team, his responsibility.

"Adversity happens in life all the time over and over and over again," he said. "You're going to have small losses every single game, whether it's an interception, whether it's a fumble, whether it's going for it in a fourth-down scenario and we don't get it. We've got to overcome those things, and I'm so proud of those guys that they did that. It's just showing such resilience.

"I can't tell you how many times Saquon Barkley and Jordan Mailata and Chauncey [Gardner-Johnson] came up to me and were like, 'Hey, we've got your back. We've got your back, Coach.' This is a hard place to play. This is a hard place to win."

It was harder Sunday for what the Eagles had to overcome, and what they had to overcome, mostly, was themselves. Lane Johnson and DeVonta Smith suffered concussions. Britain Covey walked out of the locker room with his left arm in a sling. Mekhi Becton and Darius Slay were injured, too. The Eagles lost all these key players, and they were on their way to losing any benefit of the doubt that they can once again be the team they were as recently as Week 11 of last season.

For most of Sunday, they couldn't have been more generous if they were strutting down Bourbon Street, tossing strings of beads to fully clothed passersby. They committed seven penalties. Jalen Hurts threw an interception in the end zone on a play on which Smith may or may not have run a poor route. Hurts lost a fumble on the subsequent possession. Braden Mann had a punt blocked.

But it was Sirianni who for a while seemed most committed to keeping the Saints within striking distance. Twice, he decided to go for it on fourth down when his offense had already advanced within Jake Elliott's field-goal range. Twice, the Eagles failed to convert. The particularly egregious first attempt — from the Saints' 15-yard line, with 10 seconds left in the first half — was enough to make you wonder whether Sirianni had determined before the game that he would go for it on any short-yardage fourth down, either to quell his critics or to satisfy Jeffrey Lurie's preference for pedal-to-metal strategy.

More than just choosing to go for it, though, Sirianni insisted that he, not offensive coordinator Kellen Moore, called the play: a handoff to Barkley that went nowhere when tight end Grant Calcaterra, the lead blocker, got pancaked. "It was my decision," he said. "I did it. It didn't work. ... That's not on Kellen. That's not on the players. I put him in a bad spot."

Last week, Sirianni made it clear that he backed Moore's decision to have Hurts throw on third-and-3 against Atlanta when there was a good argument to be made that running the ball was more prudent. Now, Sirianni was asking everyone to believe that he had wrested control of the offense away from Moore ... but just for this one play that didn't work. He couldn't have been more obvious in what he was doing if he had unsheathed a gladius and pointed the tip to his chest.

"It's always on me and me first, nobody else," he said. "It's on me first. I was taught early in this game by my dad that if you're coaching, and something happens on that field, that's your responsibility. That's nobody else's responsibility. That's being a man. That's what being a man's about. Take responsibility for the s--- you're in charge of."

His team, his responsibility. The head coach who had taken a step back this season, who has admitted that his role has been reduced, was asserting himself one more time Sunday. Nothing is ever clean and calm with Nick Sirianni. Nothing is ever easy, for him or the Eagles. Sunday showed it: Even with the best of outcomes, nothing ever will be.

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