The Eagles are underdogs no more: Like Doug Pederson said, it’s the norm for them to reach the Super Bowl
A charge through the NFL postseason like the one this team has made is no longer a rare occurrence.
Sometime between Saquon Barkley’s lightning-bolt 60-yard touchdown and the Washington Commanders’ dumb and desperate attempts to stop the Tush Push, between the opening kickoff of Sunday’s NFC championship game and the moment early in the fourth quarter when Nick Foles’ face flashed across Lincoln Financial Field’s two giant video boards, the Eagles should have made certain that someone carried out a challenging but necessary task.
Simple. Find an intern, the low man on the Eagles’ organizational hierarchy chart, and send that poor Zoomer out into the night with a mission: Confiscate all those “underdog” masks from the Eagles’ 2018 Super Bowl run. Find them. Collect them. Toss them into the Schuylkill or burn them. They don’t fit anymore. They don’t apply anymore. They don’t represent who the Eagles are anymore.
And who are they? They’re not a dynasty, no, not quite. But after their 55-23 victory over the Commanders, now that they are headed to their third Super Bowl in eight years, they have reached a place within the NFL that they haven’t occupied since Steve Van Buren and Greasy Neale were household names three-quarters of a century ago.
What happened here Sunday was not a surprise, was not a Cinderella story, was nothing other than a dominant performance from a team that has been dominant all season and that has been an elite franchise for just about a decade.
Consider that eight-year stretch: the Super Bowl win, the three NFC titles, the four NFC East titles, the seven playoff berths — all accomplished with two head coaches and three quarterbacks. From Doug Pederson to Nick Sirianni, from Carson Wentz to Foles to Jalen Hurts, the Eagles have become exactly the kind of team that Pederson — back in February 2018, on the Art Museum steps, with the glow of 41-33 still shimmering — promised they would.
“Get used to this,” Pederson said after this city’s first Super Bowl parade. “This is the new norm in Philadelphia, playing and hopefully playing into February every year. It’s the new norm, so get used to it.”
It was an arrogant thing to say then, with the Eagles coming off an out-of-nowhere season with an unbelievable ending: running the Philly Special, beating Tom Brady and Bill Belichick with a backup QB. “Premature?” defensive end Brandon Graham, the longest-tenured player on the team, said Sunday. Well, yes. Yet Pederson’s moment of braggadocio seems a premonition now.
“It’s cool to say that we’ve been to the Super Bowl two or three times,” Graham said. “I’m thankful for this moment right now. It ain’t easy, man. It don’t happen by accident. We have unfinished business from ‘22.”
Jeffrey Lurie and Howie Roseman have built an organization that is the envy of most of the league, one that competes for championships pretty much every year, one that can adjust to the shifts and trends of pro football, one that — most importantly — knows how to adjust to those shifts and trends.
» READ MORE: He’s a Delco native, youth pastor, and recovering addict who’s now a hilarious Philly sports sensation on Instagram
Take the signing of Barkley. It’s not just that the Eagles took advantage of the New York Giants’ lack of forethought in failing to keep Barkley themselves. It’s that the Eagles acquired him at a moment when NFL defenses have been constructed to do one thing first and foremost: stop the pass.
Everyone was zigging that way. The Eagles, equipped already with the league’s best offensive line, now with the league’s best running back, zagged. And Barkley has had the best debut season by a Philadelphia pro athlete since Moses Malone led the 76ers to the 1982-83 NBA championship. He scored three touchdowns in São Paulo, Brazil, against the Green Bay Packers, in the Eagles’ regular-season opener, and he scored three Sunday. There could be no better bookends.
Hurts matched Barkley’s brilliance with his finest game since Super Bowl LVII, since he went throw for throw and play for play with Patrick Mahomes in Glendale, Ariz., two years ago: 20-for-28, 246 yards, one passing touchdown, three rushing touchdowns, in total control, a redemptive night for a quarterback who was perceived to be just a passenger on this runaway train.
“I don’t play the game for stats,” he said. “I don’t play the game for numbers. Success is relative to the person. The standard is to win.”
The Eagles defense forced four Washington turnovers. A.J. Brown caught six passes, including a touchdown, for 96 yards, and nobody cared what book he read on the sideline ... or whether he read one at all.
“There’s so much more we can tap into,” Brown said. “There’s so much more out there for us.”
It’s out there for them in one more game, two weeks from now in New Orleans. For all the angst and pessimism that hung over Philadelphia’s sports culture for so long, for all the comfort that fans here had with following those few teams that weren’t supposed to win championships and somehow came close or finished the job — the 1993 Phillies, the 2000-01 76ers, the 2009-10 Flyers — the Eagles under Lurie and Roseman have raised the standard here.
A charge through the NFL postseason like the one this team has made is no longer a rare occurrence. From the dais in the center of Lincoln Financial Field, with confetti fluttering throughout the night sky, Lurie said: “It’s kind of expected, I think.”
It’s the norm. Everyone around here is more than happy to get used to it.