With OTAs Underway and Another Philadelphia Season on the Horizon, the Eagles Have One Last Debt To Be Paid.
Relax, the Eagles didn’t forget to resign a key free agent. At least not that we know of.
And this isn’t an unexpected visit from Captain Davy Jones from The Pirates of the Caribbean movie series, arriving to cash in on your debt.
No one hundred years aboard The Flying Dutchman for you.
The Eagles have re-signed veterans this offseason, added free agents in key positions of need, and earned an outstanding Draft Day Grade for brilliantly plucking talent from the collegiate ranks that somehow all other 31 NFL teams didn’t even detect.
Off the field, the Eagles made big moves, too. They moved closer to international fame by scheduling a first home game in Brazil to kick off the season on a September Friday night in Primetime.
Back home, they have added renovations to Lincoln Financial Field, including a TikPick Section in the Stadium.
As the anticipation for the 2024–2025 NFL season grows around Philadelphia, the Eagles have one last great responsibility.
That responsibility is to you.
The goal of every NFL team each season in early summer is to lay the groundwork to challenge for a championship in February. But this responsibility isn’t just to play another shiny piece of hardware in the Novacare Complex showcase named after Green Bay’s legendary coach and polished on a regular schedule.
On February 6th, 2018 — seconds after a Tom Brady Hail Mary pass fell to the turf at U.S. Bank Stadium — you finally came to your just reward. For ten seconds, the Eagles defense and every household in the metropolitan Philadelphia area froze and asked, “Did we just win the Super Bowl?”
The pandemonium that followed — an event that took 58 years to happen again — was a feeling that Eagles fans deserve to feel every several years, not every half a century. You joined fellow Eagles fans at local bars, poured onto Philadelphia Streets in celebration, and climbed street light poles.
We let our youngest Eagles fans stay up late, and for those whose bedtime was hours before, we woke them. We wanted them to remember where they were on this night for the rest of their lives. The night that the Philadelphia Eagles were once again World Champions.
For nearly ninety-one years since Bert Bell utilized the likeness of FDR’s blue Eagles for his “New Deal” as the iconic visual of his new franchise, you have loved your team unconditionally.
Eagles fans withstood almost a decade of losing right after the team’s inception, shoveled out Shibe Park in the 1948 NFL Championship Game in a blizzard, and then saw them repeat in 1949. They froze in the stands the Day after Christmas at Franklin Field in 1960, withstood nearly fifteen years of losing in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and decimated the living room furniture when they lost Super Bowl XV and Super Bowl XXIX.
When they lost Super Bowl LVII because of a penalty late in the game, you rallied behind their young quarterback, who promised to “win or to learn.”
Each summer, you participate in the Eagles tradition by spending thousands on season tickets, hundreds on merchandise, and even more on travel to see away games. In 2022, the Eagles grossed over $598 million in revenue.
This year, you might even be flying to Brazil.
Philadelphia’s love of its Eagles isn’t an arrogant, obnoxious attitude; it’s a dedication to our football team, like having another child. They are ours, win or lose, home or away.
Football was built for Philadelphia. We supported the University of Pennsylvania as far back as 1876 and attended games at Franklin Field as far back as 1895. When Guy Chamberlain’s Frankford Yellow Jackets endured two fires at Frankford Stadium, were ravaged financially by the Great Depression, and were no longer viable in 1933, Philly was looking for a team to love.
They found it in the Eagles and have loved them with unwavering devotion ever since. Other NFL franchises are devoted to their teams, but not like Philadelphia and the Eagles.
As the creeping humidity of May and June grows, the excitement of another Eagles season with rookie camps and OTA’s and the promise of another NFL Championship — that championship would be for you.
It is the Eagles who owe you, Philadelphia. Payment begins on September 6th in Sao Paulo, Brazil, at 9:15 p.m. I have already bought my T-shirt.
Oh, and that night of February 4th, 2018? That night was ours.
PHOTO: —
Michael Thomas Leibrandt
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