PHILADELPHIA — The best way to start any story about coach of the year voting is with a big deep breath and a long, exaggerated eye roll. Same goes for most end-of-year voting. Remember, these awards exist mostly for parochial reactions like the one you are about to get here.
Once you get to a certain level of accomplishment, the only way to distinguish between candidates is with your own firsthand testimony. Because each local market watches its own candidate closer than any of the other, and because observation bias is a thing, everybody comes away thinking they wuz robbed.
Of course, I am immune to cognitive biases, which is why you should trust me when I say that the Eagles’ Nick Sirianni really, truly, actually was robbed when the NFL left him off its list of finalists for the league’s coach of the year award.
