The Eagles take in more Brazilian culture, reflect on the significance of Friday’s global spectacle

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — When Nick Sirianni thinks about the Eagles’ season opener against the Green Bay Packers at Corinthians Arena on Friday night, the fourth-year head coach said he gets goosebumps.

Sirianni, like many of his players, grew up competing in high school football games under the Friday night lights in his hometown. The NFL does not hold contests on Friday nights, thanks to the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, which prohibits professional football leagues from broadcasting their games after 6 p.m. on Fridays starting on the second Friday of September.

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So, for one rare moment as an NFL head coach, Sirianni will have an opportunity to re-experience that feeling he once cherished as a high school player in Jamestown, N.Y.

“The emotion of football, it’s one of the reasons I love this game so much,” Sirianni said. “I have so many good memories of this game. So many good relationships that have happened because of this game. [I] look forward to the people of Brazil, of the world, to be able to experience what we got to experience growing up: their first game being under Friday night lights.”

The stadium lights will have their time to shine on Friday. Roughly 32 hours before kickoff, the home-team Eagles elected to conduct their typical day-before-the-game walk-through at Corinthians Arena under the blue São Paulo sky, illuminating the grass field with daylight.

After trotting out through the tunnel from the locker room to the field, which is branded with the Eagles wordmark, the players stretched, then ran sideline-to-sideline in waves. The blare of a trainer’s whistle broke up each activity and echoed through the spectatorless stadium. But the building wasn’t empty — media members and television cameras, mostly local to the region, filled a stationed-off area behind the sideline for the brief open portion of practice.

Following the walk-through, Saquon Barkley said he and Tanner McKee received customized soccer jerseys from the Brazilian Football Confederation with their last names on the back, enjoying a little piece of the other kind of football.

“I’m not really too familiar with so — am I allowed to say that?” Barkley said with a laugh. “Football? With football here in South America.”

McKee is the Eagles player most familiar with Brazilian culture. The third-string quarterback served a two-year mission as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Curitiba, the biggest city in the state of Paraná in southern Brazil, when he was 18 years old.

» READ MORE: Football is life: Before Tanner McKee became an Eagles QB, he was an honorary Coritiba Crocodile in Brazil

At the press conference following the walk-through, McKee served as his own translator, answering questions in Portuguese and in English for the North and South American media corps in attendance. He said he has enjoyed experiencing the culture through his teammates’ eyes, especially those who expressed skepticism about traveling to Brazil.

“There was a little band out there doing music, and the guys were like, ‘Oh, Brazilian music. This is great,’” McKee said. “It’s fun for the people to feel the culture and feel, like, this is a different culture that they’re not used to, but it’s still great. There’s nothing to be scared of. It’s really something pretty cool.”

Jordan Mailata relayed his excitement for the game in São Paulo, too, not only for the sake of growing the sport internationally. He views it as a potential source of inspiration for aspiring American football players who live abroad.

The 27-year-old left tackle once was one of them. Mailata, who hails from Australia, entered the NFL through the International Player Pathway Program in 2018, after previously playing rugby.

“This is huge for the game, for the game itself,” Mailata said. But even [bigger] for the players who are just like me. Who come from a different background. And for kids who have never heard of the NFL before, just like me, who can try and attain a career in this.”

Jalen Hurts came up through a more traditional route as a “kid from east Houston that used to play this game in the streets,” he said. The Eagles starting quarterback enjoyed playing the sport anywhere, cherishing any patch of grass he could find to play on. The chance to take the field in Brazil is special, and it’s Hurts’ first trip to South America.

“Just having the opportunity to come this far in this journey and to be where we are, my spirit is full of gratitude to be here, and [I’ve] really just [been] reflecting on how [far] the journey has come for me,” Hurts said.

Under the Friday night lights, the NFL will bring its product to South America for the first time, not just on television. As someone who grew up watching YouTube videos of NFL highlights long before he got to witness the sport in person, Mailata said the act of hosting a game in Brazil will continue to fuel the budding passion around the game.

“It’s a lot different than watching it on TV,” Mailata said. “You can see everything. The sounds are different. The sights are different. TV adds about five kilos. I’m a lot skinnier in person. But, again, everything is different. You get to see everything. You get to see the sidelines live.

“If you’re a fan, if you’ve been a fan for a long time, that’s just, again, another dream. You’re going to want another game here. Immediately, when you go to one game, you experience it, you’re going to want another game.”

The Eagles play in their season opener against the Green Bay Packers in São Paulo, Brazil. Join Eagles beat reporters Olivia Reiner and EJ Smith as they dissect the hottest storylines surrounding the team on Gameday Central, live from Corinthians Arena.