Let’s spare hyperbole: Eagles fans have been waiting a long time for a championship. The football team has been around since 1933 but has never won a Super Bowl, that’s basically forever.
The Eagles have won three championships, but all pre-date the AFL-NFL merger and none since 1960. One of the most iconic images of football history is from that last Eagles championship game: Philadelphia legend Chuck Bednarik (who played both offense and defense in the game) with both a cigarette and a cigar as he celebrates the last championship the Eagles ever won — literally smoking them while he’s got ’em.
Fifty-seven years. That’s the last time the Eagles have been champions.
Habitually painful losing is as time-honored a tradition in Philadelphia as that Bednarik photo is iconic. It’s not the type of losing that Browns fans have to endure, rather it’s worse. The Eagles have gotten close to winning a championship since 1960 a handful of times, but never close enough. They made it to the Super Bowl twice, in 1980 and 2004, losing both times. At the start of the last decade, Philly made three straight NFC Championship Games, only to lose every single time. In a ten year span with Andy Reid, Philadelphia went to playoffs eight times but advanced to the Super Bowl once — and lost.
You don’t have to be a math major to know, that’s not good. You do, however, have to be an Eagles fan to know just how cathartic this current Super Bowl run has been in the face of history.
When Carson Wentz tore his ACL, it seemed like the vortex of pain had sucked Eagles fans right back in. The injury not only ended what could have been the first MVP season for a Philadelphia player since the Phillies’ Jimmy Rollins in 2008 but it all but crushed the potential Super Bowl dreams fans had conjured up. Everything was set up for this to be the year: Aaron Rodgers was hurt, Case Keenum was the second-best quarterback in the conference, and all but one team from last year’s playoff field was good enough to be returning. As clear a path as ever to a Super Bowl, and like so many years before it was all going to come crashing down.
The Eagles are supposed to lose, which makes them even more unpredictable and dangerous. Gusto and bravado are impossible to quantify analytically.
Despite the narrative, the Eagles proved to be more junkyard dogs than underdogs. Scrappy and determined, the team inexplicably has gotten better after the Wentz injury. Philly hasn’t been favored in any of the playoff games, yet it’s 60-minutes away from winning the Super Bowl. Nick Foles, who has returned to finish business he started in 2013 before being passed over, is playing out of his mind. He’s fresh off a game where he shredded the best defense in the league and is playing with an unimaginable chip on his shoulder. The offensive line is missing it’s best player but has somehow managed to be the best in football. Defensively the Eagles have quietly had one of the best seasons in franchise history, even if no one is talking about it.
That’s the fighting spirit of a team; it’s not only talented but believes in itself. Lane Johnson and Timmy Jernigan are loose as hell and cracking jokes. Nick Foles and Chris Long are poised and calculated in their media interviews. Doug Pederson looks like he’s at his son’s hockey tournament, not the biggest game of his career. These guys haven’t been here before, yet they’re all acting like seasoned veterans.The Eagles are supposed to lose, which makes them even more unpredictable and dangerous. Gusto and bravado are impossible to quantify analytically, but when a team has both it’s a variable that’s hard to account for. An opponent can cover a top receiver or dominate up front — it can’t defend against swagger. Philly has enough of that to at least go around twice.
It’s been a long time since 1960, but some things never change. In that NFL Championship Game, the Eagles were up against the original quarterback/head coach combo: Green Bay’s Vince Lombardi and Bart Starr. Ultimately the Eagles were outgained in the game 401 yards to 296, gave up 22 first downs, and turned the ball over more than a few times. Even with all that, Philadelphia still walked away with a 17-13 win, handing Lombardi the only playoff defeat he suffered in his entire career. The lasting legacy of that game is Bednarik — not the image of him smoking afterward, but of him making a game-saving tackle to make that moment possible. For all the talk about history and the Patriots, the tentacles of time snake through history for the Eagles too; it’s just been a little longer.
On Sunday, Philly will go up against the best head coach and quarterback duo the league has ever seen. New England is in line for its eighth championship since 2001, a streak that has already once before chewed up the Eagles. Philadelphia will be taking on this task with a backup quarterback and without four of it’s best offensive players. Everything suggests the Eagles place in history has been determined.
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History has been put on hold by this franchise before, though. It’s been over a half-century, but that wait only makes this team — the underdogs with grit — being the one to break the streak even sweeter for Eagles fans.