The Eagles’ James Bradberry has gone from Samford to Super Bowl LVII. Now he’s going to get P-A-I-D.

PHOENIX — Samford University’s undergraduate enrollment comprises fewer than 6,000 students. Its football program competes at the Division I level — the Division I Football Championship Subdivision level, a cut below the cream of the crop in college ball. It is located in Alabama, but it isn’t Alabama. There have been 20 Samford alumni to play in the NFL. Three are in the league now. James Bradberry is one. So how did he get here: important player for the Eagles, starting cornerback for a Super Bowl team, free agent-to-be who is about to sign the kind of contract that will set up him and his family for life?

“First, shout-out to God,” Bradberry, who is 29, was saying Monday at the Footprint Center here, as the chaos of Super Bowl LVII’s “Opening Night” event swirled around him. “He blessed me with a 6-1 frame, and I can run a 4.5, and I’m strong and whatnot. Secondly, I would say good coaching. And hard work. I worked pretty hard. I definitely always felt like an underdog.”

Should the Eagles beat the Chiefs this Sunday, Bradberry stands to live forever in Philly sports history as an all-time one-year wonder, another Patrick Robinson or Torrey Smith or Geoff Jenkins, a guy in town just long enough to make a vital contribution to a championship team. His benefits to the Eagles this season have gone beyond one big play in one big moment, though. He was a second-team All-Pro selection, from start to finish the Eagles’ best cornerback this season. He had three interceptions during the regular season, including one that he returned for a touchdown in the opener in Detroit against the Lions. He had another in the Eagles’ divisional-round rout of the Giants, stepping in front of Darius Slayton as if he knew where and when Daniel Jones was throwing the football.

Which he kind of did.

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“We worked the play over and over,” Eagles defensive backs coach Dennard Wilson said, “and he trusted that that play was going to happen, and he jumped it. He did a lot of film and a lot of practice. Every time the offense comes to the line, they tell you a little bit about what’s about to go down by the formation. James can sit in his stance and process that quickly. He’s not afraid to make a play. Some guys can be afraid to make plays. He’s not.

“He’s extremely smart. He puts in a lot of work and puts in a lot of film study, and the things that we go over in the meeting room, he can see it before it happens. So the film study is there. The length really helps him. He can press, play off, but his football intelligence is off the charts.”

In 2016, while he was the Rams’ defensive backs coach, Wilson had scouted Bradberry a bit ahead of that year’s draft. A 6-foot-1, 211-pound cornerback at a program like Samford’s — Bradberry had transferred there from Arkansas State — tends to pique the interest of NFL coaches and player-personnel people. Sure, he had eight interceptions and 128 tackles and the kind of size in a cornerback that coaches crave, but how good was this kid, really? “When he came out, he was on everybody’s radar,” Wilson said. “A long guy from a smaller school — you always hope you can get him.”

The Rams didn’t get him. The Panthers did, in the second round with the 62nd overall pick. For the first six years of his career — four with the Panthers, two with the Giants, who signed him as a free agent in 2020 then cut him last year to save salary-cap space — Bradberry had started all 91 games in which he appeared, intercepted 15 passes, made the Pro Bowl … and experienced one winning season. When he signed with the Eagles last May, for one year and $7.25 million, he was taking a chance that he could parlay one strong season for a team coming off a playoff berth into a long-term, bigger-money deal once he hit free agency again this summer.

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That gamble on himself was on his mind much more earlier this season, he said. But now that the season is narrowed to one game, the biggest game, and the role he might play in it — don’t be surprised to see Bradberry covering Travis Kelce for a few snaps or more Sunday — Bradberry is weighing how much his time with the Eagles might shape the decision he has to make: Where do I want to play next?

“It’s influenced my thought process quite a bit,” he said. “My first six years in the league, I didn’t really win a whole lot. Coming to this team here and winning and actually making it to the playoffs and competing for a Super Bowl, it makes me want to play football forever.”

In Philadelphia or anywhere?

“Just in general,” he said. “I mean, losing sucks. If you’re making a lot of money and also losing, you kind of lose your love for the game. But I feel like coming here, being around these guys, and winning, it gave me the energy and love and passion for the game that I was missing.”

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It still seems a long shot that the Eagles would bring him back. Howie Roseman’s disciplined approach to team-building allowed him to wait for Bradberry to become available, and that same discipline will likely prevent Roseman from committing too many years and too much money to keeping him. Maybe one year of James Bradberry and his own underdog story is all the Eagles were meant to enjoy. They can’t say it wasn’t worth it.