Bradley Cooper records a special video for the Eagles-Dolphins game

In addition to landing Cooper, NBC will also be embracing kelly green tonight, incorporating the throwback look into their graphics packages.

Bradley Cooper reacts during the NFC Championship game between the Eagles and San Francisco 49ers at Lincoln Financial Field on Jan. 29, 2023.Read moreYong Kim / Staff Photographer

by Rob Tornoe

Published Oct. 22, 2023, 5:20 p.m. ET

One of Hollywood’s biggest stars is back on NBC to hype up tonight’s Eagles game.

Academy Award-winner and Birds super fan Bradley Cooper has recorded a new opening video that will air ahead of tonight’s Eagles game against the Miami Dolphins on Sunday Night Football. The Jenkintown native is a lifelong Birds’ fan thanks to his late father, Charles, who passed away 11 years ago. Cooper was able to get his father to a playoff game between the Eagles and Green Bay Packers in January 2011. Charles died six days later.

In the 90-second video provided to The Inquirer, Cooper doesn’t really lean into his Birds fandom. Instead, he uses his time to highlight the first NFL matchup between two former Alabama stars — Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts and Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa.

Hurts was benched in the 2018 National Championship game in favor of Tagovailoa, who went on to lead the Crimson Tide to a comeback win over Georgia. Then-Alabama offensive coordinator Mike Locksley told The Inquirer it was the first time he’d ever seen Hurts emotional.

“He was in tears, he walked into my office and said, ‘What do I do now? I’m 26-2 as a starter and I just lost my job,” Locksley said. But as Cooper explains, Hurts decided to remain at Alabama, and ended up replacing an injured Tagovailoa in the 2018 SEC Championship Game, leading the Crimson Tide to a win over Georgia.

Now the two will face each other for the first time as two of the league’s top quarterbacks on teams vying for the Super Bowl.

“Not a bad story, am I right?” Cooper says in the video. “The kind of game Sunday night was made for.”

Here is the full transcript of Cooper’s narration:

Football’s pretty simple. The best games pretty much always have the best backstories, though this one’s a little different.

Rewind six years. These guys were teammates at Bama — J. Hurts, the big star, and Tua, the freshmen backup. Halfway through the national title game, the team was down. [Tua] came in out of nowhere, and the rest was history.

But even though he’d lost his job, Jalen stuck around for a year. And sure enough, in the SEC title game, the roles were reversed. Tua got hurt, and this time, Jalen stepped in to lead them to the win.

Now, all these years later, these guys don’t have to look over their shoulder anymore to see each other because they’re face-to-face for the first time ever. Two of the league’s best. Two teams looking primed for a Super Bowl run.

Not a bad story, am I right? The kind of game Sunday night was made for.

It’s the second time NBC has turned to Cooper to record an opening video for Sunday Night Football. Last season, Cooper hyped up Eagles fans ahead of a Week 6 win against the hated Dallas Cowboys. Hopefully Cooper proves to be a good luck charm again tonight.

NBC and ESPN embracing the Eagles’ kelly green

In addition to landing Cooper, NBC will also be embracing kelly green tonight.

With the Eagles wearing their kelly green jerseys for the first time since 2010, NBC will incorporate the throwback look into their graphics packages tonight, according to network sources.

Other networks have gotten on the kelly green bandwagon, too.

During Sunday NFL Countdown, ESPN had a feature on Princess Diana and her famed Eagles jacket that included longtime Birds announcer Merrill Reese.

Diana, who was tragically killed in a car accident in 1997, wasn’t a Birds fan — the jacket was given to her by then-Eagles statistician Jack Edelstein after the two spoke at the funeral reception for Philadelphia native Grace Kelly. Diana’s favorite colors were green and silver, so the team sent her a package that included workout shorts, shirts, and the famed Eagles jacket she wore on the cover of People magazine.

ESPN’s feature asked one long-unanswered question no one really has an answer for — where is the jacket today?

“I’m hopeful it’s somewhere, and that we can get the jacket and put it on display,” said Marnie Schneider, the granddaughter of former Eagles owner Leonard Tose.

“Because I definitely think the fans of Princess Diana [and] the Eagles fans all over the world would love to see that jacket.”