Dan Quinn helped him chase his NFL dream. This diehard Eagles fan can’t lose on Sunday.

It was only a few hours, but it felt like an entire day had passed by as Jim Emanuel waited to find out if he made the team.

He was not one of the 254 players drafted four months earlier after playing linebacker at a small school, but he impressed the San Francisco 49ers enough in the summer of 2000 to hang around until the final day of training camp.

Emanuel grew up in Northeast Philadelphia, watched Buddy Ryan’s Eagles every Sunday, and dreamed of reaching the NFL.

“I was sitting around,” Emanuel said. “And I started thinking, ‘I might have made this team.’”

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And then the call came. Emanuel was told to report to the team’s facility. He was the last player released before the NFL season started. He was crushed. Emanuel flew home and returned to Hofstra University — the Division I-AA program on Long Island — to tell his old coaches.

Dan Quinn, then Hofstra’s defensive coordinator and now the head coach of the Washington Commanders, told Emanuel that his dream wasn’t finished. The coach said he would call NFL scouts and remind them about Emanuel, just like he did when Emanuel played there.

“He said, ‘The only way your dream ends is if you give up,’” Emanuel said.

Emanuel returned home to Philly, stayed in shape, and waited for another chance. A few months later, Emanuel was flying overseas to play in NFL Europe. His old coach helped make it happen.

Emanuel never played in an NFL game, but he came much closer than most. And he owes a lot of it to “Quinny.” So the diehard Eagles fan will be conflicted on Sunday.

Emanuel, 48, is raising his four daughters in Nebraska as Philly fans and watches the games every week with NFL Sunday Ticket. He was an All-City linebacker at Archbishop Ryan and wore No. 20 as a freshman because of Andre Waters. The Eagles, he said, were everything.

But the opposing coach this week in the NFC title game is the guy who believed in Emanuel 25 years ago. Either Emanuel’s team is going to the Super Bowl or Quinny is headed to New Orleans.

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“Here’s the thing,” Emanuel said. “I feel like I’m in a win-win situation. If the Eagles win, awesome. If they lose, I’ll be upset about it, but I’ll have someone to root for in the Super Bowl.”

Emanuel hoped to play at a big-time college, but grades limited his choices. So he ended up playing in 1995 at Hofstra, which no longer has a football team. Quinn arrived a year later as the defensive line coach after stops at William and Mary and Virginia Military Institute.

He asked Emanuel what his goals were.

“I told him exactly what I wanted. I wanted a shot at playing in the NFL,” Emanuel said. “Going into my junior year, Quinny said, ‘You have a chance to play at the next level.’ He would tell me what teams were looking for and looking at. He would tell me what some of the concerns were and would work with me on the things I needed to get better at so I could stand a chance.”

Quinn reminded Emanuel of his friend’s older brother, a guy who always “makes it about you.” He was on Long Island, but Emanuel felt like he was back in Northeast Philly. Quinn, just like Michael Wade, never made the conversation about himself.

“People like that are special,” Emanuel said. “Quinny is constantly making it about others and he does it in a genuine way. It’s not cheesy.”

Quinn was the program’s liaison for NFL scouts, but he had to be honest with them. He couldn’t just give a thumbs up to every player at Hofstra or else the evaluators would no longer trust his judgment. So it meant something to Emanuel when Quinn told the scouts to watch No. 44.

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“I didn’t know anything,” Emanuel said. “I was an 18-, 19-year-old kid, so to hear from this guy who was having conversations with NFL scouts that I could play at the NFL level, it wasn’t a layup. He said, ‘Here’s things you need to work on in the next three years, but if you commit, I think you’ll have a legitimate opportunity and I’ll make sure I do everything in my power to help you.’ And he did. He followed through with that. He was all in.”

Emanuel was an honorable mention All-American as a senior in 1999 and helped Hofstra finish No. 3 in the country. But he was not drafted. A few hours after the draft ended, his agent called. The 49ers wanted to give a shot to the player Quinn signed off on.

Emanuel visited Quinn last month to watch a practice before the Commanders played the Falcons. It felt like Hofstra.

“We could tell watching that practice how much the players love him,” Emanuel said. “From talking to some of his guys, they were telling me about the things they love about him. He’s so incredibly locked in on what an individual is trying to achieve. Whether it’s the next contract or Pro Bowl. He puts all their individual goals and surrounds them with his message on the team and genuinely tries to help each individual achieve their goals. I think that’s what makes him special.”

Quinn won a Super Bowl as Seattle’s defensive coordinator and was the head coach of the Falcons when they reached the Super Bowl. He’s now a win away from reaching the Super Bowl in his first year in Washington.

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Quinn has come a long way from that small school on Long Island. But Emanuel said the coach’s success is because he’s still the same Quinny.

“You can just tell,” Emanuel said. “I’ve seen two interviews with Zach Ertz and all he does is praise Q for the way he is with the players. It’s God-given. You can’t force it and you can’t pretend it. You have to be about it and it’s so hard to explain. He has an unbelievable ability to connect with people and make it about them.”

Emanuel’s time in NFL Europe came with a beachfront hotel on the Mediterranean Sea. He landed a spot with the Barcelona Dragons after Quinn called some scouts and told them his old linebacker needed fresh game tape.

It was a chance for Emanuel to impress another NFL team and he parlayed his spring with the Dragons into a contract with the Chicago Bears. Emanuel nearly pushed himself onto their roster but fell short at the end of training camp. He latched on the next summer with the Raiders but was sent home again after training camp. Emanuel knew then it was time.

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“You were chasing your dream and then you have to come back to the neighborhood and there’s all these people who doubted you,” said Emanuel, now the regional vice president of an insurance company. “But football was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. It gave me all the opportunities that I have today.”

The disappointment Emanuel felt more than 20 years ago has eased. He only knew one other guy — Frank Wycheck — who signed an NFL contract. Not bad for a kid from Parkwood. Emanuel may have never gotten as close as he did if Quinn didn’t make him believe that his dream could be a reality. On Sunday, one of their teams is going to the Super Bowl.

“If someone was to ask me who was super instrumental in playing a part in chasing my dream,” Emanuel said, “Quinny’s name is in there. He told me I had all the intangibles and he told all the scouts I had the intangibles.”