Nick Sirianni Says He's A-OK With AJ Brown Getting Some Reading In On The Sidelines

One of the big takeaways from Sunday's Wild Card Round meeting between the Eagles and the Packers had nothing to do with football and everything to do with AJ Brown being quite the bookworm.

Brown picked up his copy of Inner Excellence — which has since shot right up the Amazon charts — and did some reading.

I like to read too, but you can understand why seeing a star wideout start throwing down some pages in the middle of a playoff game like he's in Oprah's book club raised some eyebrows.

However, Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni told Philadelphia sports radio station WIP that he didn't have an issue with it because, as it turns out, certain passages in the book help Brown with the mental side of his game.

"I'm definitely OK with it. The crazy thing is, he's been reading this book on the sideline for a long time. It just so happened a camera saw it this week," Sirianni said. "Some guys pray in between, some guys mediate in between. A.J. reads in between. Whatever these guys need to do to put their mind in a place where they can play with great detail and great effort, I fully encourage them to do that. 

"I love A.J. He's such a great teammate. I saw Jahan Dotson said something defending A.J. and I thought that was awesome too. Another example of our teammates defending each other."

Sirianni also condemned the way people immediately assumed that Brown must be disgruntled after he was seen with the book.

"We don't do any research and we jump to a conclusion of, 'Oh he must be disgruntled.' That to me is lazy, Sirianni said. "Everyone needs to figure out why he's doing it before they jump to judgment on the man. Because the man, A.J. Brown is a great, great, great person. The man A.J. Brown is the best receiver—and I'll say it without hesitation—the best receiver that this city has ever seen...It's hard for me to watch when people are getting on him without doing the proper research of who the man is and what he's doing in the first place."

It's cool to see a coach stick up for his player… but I'm not sure how people were supposed to look up whether AJ Brown reads on the sidelines all the time if that was one of the first times a TV camera caught him doing it.

I get Sirianni's point though, and he's right that sometimes the internet is too quick to react to things for its own good.