PHILADELPHIA — It was during OTAs last spring when Eagles coach Nick Sirianni tapped left tackle Jordan Mailata on the shoulder as he passed him on the first floor of the practice facility and said, “Hey, come up and see me in my office when you have time.”
“F—, what did I do wrong?” Mailata thought. Did he slip up at practice? Had he said something he shouldn’t have to the media?
After getting himself a plate of food in the cafeteria (“If I was getting told off, I was getting told off eating,” Mailata joked), he walked upstairs to Sirianni’s office. But Sirianni wasn’t there. Mailata poked his head into a meeting room and there he found Sirianni in the middle of a conversation with a host of assistants. Mailata sheepishly said he’d come back later and tried to duck out, but Sirianni insisted on leaving the meeting to talk with the veteran offensive lineman.
“Have a seat,” Sirianni said. “You’re not in trouble or anything. I just wanted to see how you’re doing. How’s Dad doing?”
“Because he knew about Dad,” Mailata said.
Mailata’s father, Tupa’i, had suffered a heart attack on the plane ride back to Australia after making the trip to Arizona to see his son play in Super Bowl LVII against the Kansas City Chiefs in February 2023. There was a time, Mailata said, when the family wasn’t sure whether Tupa’i would survive.
Sirianni served as a confidant to Mailata during that period, having sit-downs with him and creating a safe space for Mailata “to talk and get my feelings out.”
“He was very supportive and said if I needed to miss time, I could miss time. That meant the world to me,” Mailata said. “I love that guy. I’ll do anything for Nick, to be honest.”
Sirianni can be a confounding public…
