Brandon Graham is an all-time Eagle for many reasons. Here’s the one that sets him apart.

There have been, if my math and the data on Pro-Football-Reference.com are to be trusted, 120 men who have played at least 200 regular-season games with one NFL team.

Nine of those men played for the Raiders, whether in Oakland, Los Angeles, and/or Las Vegas. No other franchise has had as many 200-gamers. The Dallas Cowboys have had seven. The San Francisco 49ers, Pittsburgh Steelers, and New England Patriots have each had six. The Eagles have had just one. You can probably guess who.

Brandon Graham’s journey to that 200-game mark was as hard as that of any member of this exclusive club. Several of the 120 have been specialists, which means that, as accomplished and talented as they were and as grueling as pro football is for anyone who puts on pads, those men weren’t putting themselves through quite the same measure of physical stress as a full-time offensive or defensive player. Jason Hanson, for instance, appeared in 327 games for the Detroit Lions, the most games that anyone has played for a single team. But Hanson was a kicker, as were Sebastian Janikowski of the Raiders (268), Pat Leahy of the New York Jets (250), and Jason Elam of the Denver Broncos (236), each of whom is his team’s leader in games played.

Graham was not a kicker. He was not a punter. He was not a long snapper. For 15 years, he played two positions — defensive end, mostly, and linebacker, some — whose purpose is to punish and whose nature requires that an athlete be punished in return. And he played 206 games at those positions. If you review the scope and circumstances of his career, it’s damn near a miracle that he did.

Consider the injuries. Graham suffered a torn ACL in December 2010, which cost him the last few weeks of his rookie season and most of his second season; he suited up for just three games in 2011. Late in the 2017 season — on Christmas night, in fact — he suffered a high ankle sprain against the Raiders, then underwent surgery on the ankle five months later in an attempt to speed up the healing process. In the second game of the 2021 season, then 33 years old, ancient by the standards of the NFL, he sustained a torn left Achilles tendon. Midway through last season, in a late-November game against the Los Angeles Rams, he suffered a torn triceps in his left arm. Eleven weeks later, he returned to play in Super Bowl LIX … and re-tore the triceps in his left arm.

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Consider the pitfalls he dodged. He was not a favorite of Jim Washburn, who was the Eagles’ defensive line coach in 2010 and 2011, whose drill-sergeant demeanor clashed with Graham’s always-upbeat personality and who tended to keep Graham on the bench. During the 2014 preseason, Chip Kelly was prepared to cut Graham in favor of Travis Long, an undrafted free-agent linebacker, until Long suffered a torn ACL. Billy Davis, the team’s defensive coordinator at the time, turned Graham into a 3-4 linebacker. Graham had never been a 3-4 linebacker before, but he performed well enough to earn himself a four-year contract extension in 2015.

Consider the label that could have broken him: bust. Graham was the 13th pick in the 2010 draft, and as has been recalled often, a slew of prospects selected after him rose to stardom, or a level close to it, before he did: Earl Thomas, Jason Pierre-Paul, Demaryius Thomas, Dez Bryant. The pressure of failing to meet the expectations that accompany being a first-round pick preyed on Graham’s mind so much that at times he was reluctant to leave his home. It is no small thing that Graham overcame the kind of mental health issue that has ruined many athletes’ careers and that — at the time, a decade and a half ago — would have had reporters, talk-show hosts, even coaches and teammates telling him to toughen up. Instead, he got better as a player as he got older. From 2010 through 2016, he had 29 sacks in 96 games. From 2017 through 2022, he had 41 sacks in 82 games, including the most important defensive play in Eagles history, that Super Bowl-saving sack of Tom Brady in February 2018.

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“To Philadelphia, we didn’t start so tight, as you know,” Graham said in his retirement speech Tuesday. “You made me work for this, and I appreciate you for that. Through the struggles, the injuries, and the moment where I had to prove myself over and over again, you never let me get comfortable. You held me accountable. You kept that chip on my shoulder. You pushed me to be better, and when the time came, we celebrated together two times.”

Those two Lombardi Trophies, atop a table inside the NovaCare Complex auditorium, flanked him as he finished his remarks. Yes, he was friendly and funny. Yes, he was gracious and approachable to every fan who wanted a piece of his time. Yes, he was essential to two immortal teams here. Above all, though, the best thing to be said about him is this: Fifteen years, 206 games, so many moments when it could have ended so much sooner, and so much worse, than it did. Brandon Graham endured.