Ahead of their matchup with the Giants, Eagles players reflect on their own personal football rivalries

After losses to the Cowboys, Brandon Graham’s DMs are flooded with “L’s” from kids across the Dallas area who’ve added him to their group chats to talk trash.

“A lot of people come at me and talk a lot of stuff, because they’re Dallas fans, and then it makes me feel on the inside like, ‘OK,’” Graham said. “Then it becomes a back-and-forth every year, and then you just get trapped in it.”

With the first big rivalry game of the 2024 season set for Sunday at MetLife Stadium, the Eagles are preparing for what’s sure to be one of the tensest environments yet — considering that Saquon Barkley left the Giants for the Birds in the offseason. But the Eagles are no strangers to big rivalry games.

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Nakobe Dean’s high school rivalry in Mississippi, Horn Lake vs. Lake Cormorant, even had its own trophy, the Lake Bowl.

“It was people you’ve been going against since you were a little kid who’s on the other team in your community,” the linebacker said. “Now we’re in high school and we’re still going against each other.”

But Dean has also seen the dark side of rivalry games. At Georgia, quarterback Stetson Bennett’s phone number got leaked by rival fans after a Bulldogs win.

Safety Tristin McCollum played at Sam Houston State, whose fierce rival was Stephen F. Austin. The game was played at NRG Stadium in Houston, home of the Texans, every season, until Sam Houston moved to the FBS, which killed the rivalry. Now, Sam Houston is developing a rivalry with Texas State, but “it’s not the same.”

The Eagles and Giants play twice a year, not just once, so McCollum said he and his teammates have more personal relationships with the players in the opposite locker room, which is a departure from college. “We didn’t really mess with the people in that locker room,” he said. But once they get on the field, the intensity is similar.

“Once the first kickoff starts, it’s no face, no case, I like to say,” McCollum said. “It’s just names and numbers, or, not names, just numbers.”

Playing division rivals more often also means the Eagles can’t rest on their laurels after one win, or get too down after a loss. Tackle Lane Johnson, one of the longest-tenured Birds, has played the Giants 20 times in his NFL career.

“You might have a good game the first game around, and then the second game is totally different,” Johnson said. “They pick up on things you might have done well the first time around. It’s just one of those teams where you know the players well, you know the coaches well. You’ve played against them, you see them, the familiarity is there.”

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With playoff positioning at stake, every game is important, but games against NFC East opponents are especially critical to securing a division title and a spot in the playoffs. If those stakes weren’t high enough, fans live and die for these rivalries, and Johnson said the Eagles feed off that energy — but they especially feed off earning first downs, so the execution can’t suffer from the intensity of the moment.

“My thought process is, you want to play them to the point where, when they know they’ve got to see you again, they’re like, ‘[Dang], we’ve got Nakobe Dean and the Eagles defense again,’” Dean said. “That’s how you want to go in and make them feel after the game.”

Referring to inside linebackers coach Bobby King, he added, “My coach likes to say they’re worth two, when you play a divisional opponent.”

The Eagles play in Week 7 against the New York Giants. Join Eagles beat reporters Olivia Reiner and EJ Smith as they dissect the hottest storylines surrounding the team on Gameday Central, live from MetLife Stadium.