Brandon Graham officially announced his retirement Tuesday, ending his career on a high note after becoming a two-time Super Bowl champion. The 36-year-old defensive end spent his entire 15-year career in Philadelphia, evolving into a fan favorite among fans.
Graham played in 206 regular-season games with the Eagles, holding the record for most games played in franchise history, and The Inquirer has been there through it all.
Here are some highlights from our coverage of Graham throughout his career in Philadelphia/
Rich Hofmann wrote about how Graham’s upbringing shaped him into the man he is today — growing up in Detroit and dealing with the death of his best friend. The defensive end summed up how he was able to thrive with the help of his family.
An abandoned high school sits on one corner, tan brick on a sprawling property, a rusting baseball backstop protecting the street from imaginary foul balls. A corner store, a tire repair place, a paint store and a couple of restaurants are also arrayed around the intersection of Warren and Cadieux on the city’s east side.
It is near the spot where Brandon Graham says his boyhood friend was killed.
“Where I grew up, a lot of stuff goes on - just from being out and with the wrong people,” Graham says. “There were a lot of different cliques. I had friends, but they all had different friends. Some people had friends that were off into drugs. Some people had friends who were out looking to steal things. It was crazy. You start limiting your friends because you’d find yourself getting into situations you didn’t want to deal with. I’d have a close call with somebody and it was like, ‘OK, I don’t want to deal with him anymore because he’ll put my life in jeopardy.’”
Rich Hofmann
After earning his first — and only — Pro Bowl honor in 2020, Les Bowen wrote about the defensive end’s journey to get to that moment, highlighting the reactions of those in the Eagles organization.
At age 32, as he neared the end of his 11th Eagles season, Graham finally made the Pro Bowl this week, along with defensive tackle Fletcher Cox and center Jason Kelce.
Eagles defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz said tears were shed in the coaches’ quarters at NovaCare Monday night when the news came.
Head coach Doug Pederson said Wednesday that when he called Graham to inform him of the long-awaited honor, Pederson “really didn’t get much words in with him. He was so excited and so thrilled on the phone … and I was happy for him and his family. He’s worked extremely hard in his career, and probably [was] worthy of making it maybe a couple of times.
Pederson called it “the cherry on top of his career.”
Les Bowen
Mike Sielski wrote about Graham’s return after tearing his Achilles tendon in the 2021 season. Instead of walking away from the sport, the defensive end began training for his 13th season in the league.
Brandon Graham had never torn his Achilles tendon before, so once he did, he wasn’t certain what had happened to him, what he was feeling in the lower part of his left leg, and why he was feeling it.
This was Sept. 19, 10 months ago, and an injury cart was wheeling him down a Lincoln Financial Field tunnelway. The Eagles would lose to the 49ers that day, 17-11, and they would lose Graham for the rest of the season, and the word alone — Achilles — conjured worst-case scenarios in his mind.
“Once I knew it was an Achilles,” Graham was saying Wednesday, “I thought, ‘Man, damn, that’s the one that everybody said they didn’t want.”
Mike Sielski
In Graham’s 15 seasons with the Eagles, the defensive end has accomplished quite a lot both on and off the field. After being nominated for the Walter Payton Man of the Year award in 2022 for the first time, Jeff Neiburg wrote about Graham’s work in the community and how he impacted the lives of others.
To millions of Eagles fans, Graham might always be the one-time draft bust that morphed into a Super Bowl hero. For others, he’s that and so much more.
Thirteen years in Philadelphia have allowed Graham to set up roots with his family. His wife, Carlyne, has been the driving force behind Graham doing more work in the community, and his infectious personality has brightened the lives of many.
The Eagles invited some of those families to surprise Graham in the Eagles’ media conference room in that “press conference” in November.
These are their stories…
Jeff Neiburg
E.J. Smith wrote about Graham’s return to the Super Bowl in 2023. Graham talked about how special it was for him to make a second Super Bowl appearance coming off an Achilles tendon tear in 2021 …
Graham, 34, has plenty to enjoy while preparing for next week’s trip to Arizona and the game that will follow. He said he expected to make it to at least one title game in his career, but the second one — coming off an Achilles tendon tear in 2021 and a resurgent 2022 season when he reached a career high in sacks — has been that much sweeter.
“This has been the best [year] for me,” Graham said. “Because who would have thought in Year 13 that I would still be here after we won the Super Bowl the first time and how things went last year with me tearing my Achilles. Now, coming off the Achilles and having one of my best years and I’m not even playing half the snaps I was playing previously, that’s the difference for me.”
EJ Smith
Mike Sielski wrote about Graham’s journey with the Eagles’ core four which included Graham, Jason Kelce, Fletcher Cox and Lane Johnson …
They’re the Eagles’ core four, all Pro Bowlers at one time or another, all Super Bowl champions. They have played a combined 696 regular-season and postseason games ... and not one for any other NFL team. They have delivered memorable speeches, played through unimaginable pain, missed games because of debilitating injuries, donned German shepherd masks to embrace being underdogs, sung songs for a Christmas album, been praised for being the best at their positions, been criticized for failing to live up to their contracts, and been around here so long that it’s getting difficult to remember the days when they weren’t around here.
As of the start of training camp Wednesday, Jason Kelce, Brandon Graham, Fletcher Cox, and Lane Johnson will have been together for a decade. Four guys, 10 years, one team. It’s damn near incomprehensible.
Mike Sielski
Olivia Reiner wrote about the support that Graham’s wife, Carlyne, has provided during the tough times in Graham’s career …
After recovering from the torn ACL and microfracture surgery, Graham returned to action in Week 9 the following season. However, he only ended up playing two more games before the Eagles finished 8-8 and missed the playoffs.
At that point, questions surrounding Graham’s viability as an NFL starter started to percolate among the media and the fanbase. They noted that New York Giants defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul, selected two spots ahead of Graham, had developed into one of the league’s best players when he recorded 21 sacks in his first two seasons. They started toying with the term “bust” as it related to Graham.
It wasn’t just his physical health that had taken a hit to that point. Carlyne noticed that Brandon was struggling mentally, too.
“He didn’t want to play anymore because he thought it was going to be a smooth transition for him and it wasn’t,” Carlyne said. “So I would just always just talk him off the ledge. There’s a reason why things are slowing down for you, you have to figure out what it is that you have to sit still for.”
Olivia Reiner
Graham was ruled out for the rest of the 2024 season after tearing his triceps against the Los Angeles Rams. But the defensive end made his improbable return during Super Bowl LIX. Olivia Reiner wrote about how his return fueled the Eagles defense …
Graham’s journey served as a lesson in determination for those who came up behind him, including the 27-year-old Josh Sweat, who posted a career-high 2½ sacks in the Super Bowl win.
“BG raised me in this league,” Sweat said. “I mean, early on in my career, it was rough for me. And he kept me going. ‘Cause he had a rough early career also. And he just showed me the way. I couldn’t be more grateful.”
Sweat was equally grateful for Graham’s presence in the Super Bowl. The elder edge rusher said “it took everybody” to get him ready to play, between his own perseverance to the support of the strength and training staff. Graham only took 13 snaps, according to Pro Football Focus, finishing the night with one tackle.
Olivia Reiner
