The Eagles’ last trip to the Super Bowl: A look back at the 2018 victory

The day is almost here.

Next Sunday, the Eagles head to Super Bowl LVII at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., where they’ll face the Kansas City Chiefs.It will be the fourth Super Bowl appearance in the franchise’s history, the most recent of which gave the team their lone Super Bowl win.

That came on Feb. 4, 2018, when the Eagles beat the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LII at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.

For Eagles fans, that date is unforgettable. It brought the team’s first Lombardi Trophy after more than half a century of waiting. Fifty-two years of dashed hopes resolved in an instant.

Now, with the Birds heading to the Super Bowl again, we’re looking back at the Eagles’ last appearance, the road that led up to it, and how Philadelphia celebrated after the win.

With their matchup against the Patriots, the Eagles faced New England in the Super Bowl for the second time. And the Patriots were expected to win.

But unlike in their 2005 game, this time, the Eagles came out victorious with a score of 41-33.

In one report, The Inquirer called it “one of the best Super Bowls ever played.” Particularly thanks to what has become known as the “Philly Special” or “Philly Philly” — a trick play toward the end of the second quarter.

In the play, center Jason Kelce snapped the ball to running back Corey Clement, who passed to tight end Trey Burton, who then threw to quarterback Nick Foles for a touchdown. Foles caught the ball for a 1-yard score, giving the Eagles a 10-point margin.

The Birds hadn’t called the play all season, and coach Doug Pederson kept it in the team’s back pocket until the Super Bowl, creating one of the biggest moments in the biggest game of the season. The team, The Inquirer reported, spent the weeks leading up to the game practicing it, but it had never gone as well as it did during the game. Foles approached Pederson about using it in the game.

“Just needed the right time, right opportunity,” Pederson said, “and the guys executed it brilliantly.”

And most of Philadelphia saw it. Ratings indicated that 56.2% of all TV households in the region — about 1.6 million in total — tuned in. And we’re betting Justin Timberlake’s halftime show wasn’t the main draw.

The Inquirer and Daily News celebrated the win in print the following day with special, keepsake editions. The Inquirer’s front page simply read, “At Last!”

The Eagles weren’t picked as winners by most. Few expected them to beat the Atlanta Falcons in the NFC divisional matchup at Lincoln Financial Field, a game for which the Birds were 2.5-point home underdogs.

But they did, 15-10, and moved onto the NFC championship.

There were doubts about Foles, who stepped in for Carson Wentz after Wentz suffered a left ACL tear.

After their win, offensive lineman Lane Johnson was spotted wearing a dog mask to have a little fun with the team’s underdog designation. The masks, which depicted the face of a German Shepard, covered Lane’s face as he took postgame questions.

“Just something a little fun,” Johnson said.

The Eagles trounced the Minnesota Vikings, clinching the NFC championship, 38-7. And Pederson was excited — almost no sports analysts thought the Birds would make it to the big game.

“We’re going to the Super Bowl!” Pederson said. “We’re going to the stinkin’ Super Bowl!”

As Inquirer columnist Marc Narducci put it, the Vikings were “blindsided” by the Eagles. Having come to Philly as the NFL’s most formidable defense, the Vikings, Narducci wrote, had hopes of being the first team to play a Super Bowl in its stadium. But they simply had no answer for the Birds’ offense.

With Wentz still injured, Foles again rose to the occasion, playing what Inquirer columnist Paul Domowitch called “the best performance of his career” at that point. Overall, Foles completed 26 of 33 passes for 352 yards, and had no turnovers and three touchdowns, and achieved a 141.4 passer rating. As Daily News columnist Les Bowen noted, Foles threw for more yards than Wentz did in any game during the season.

The Birds were so dominant that the crowd began chanting “Super Bowl! Super Bowl!” long before the clock counted down to zero. Fans flaunted the team’s impending win while wearing dog masks. And once they won, confetti and fireworks flew as nearly 70,000 fans sang “Fly, Eagles Fly!” as the team held up the NFC championship trophy.

“This city deserves it,” tight end Brent Celek said after the game. “We’re going to have so much fun. We just have to finish this thing.”

In short, a gigantic party. Or, as one post-parade article from The Inquirer called it, a “celebration for the ages.”

The 2018 parade arrived the Thursday following the Eagles’ win, drawing upward of 700,000 people to celebrate along Broad Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. As one man told The Inquirer, “I don’t think there’d be this many people if Jesus came back.”

Homemade signs dotted the crowds, plenty of which dumped on Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. Others paid homage to the game-winning Philly Special, or included hand-drawn portraits of Foles. But none could top the skywriting over the city that read “Philly Philly, Dilly Dilly” in a nod to the Bud Light campaign (Bud Light, incidentally, also made good on a promise to give Eagles fans free beer).

Of course, there was pole climbing. And beer. And yelling. But crowds, the police said, were largely peaceful.

Other fans celebrated more solemnly, such as one who came all the way from Florida to scatter his grandfather’s ashes along the parade route. Another Philadelphia man brought a small urn of his father’s ashes with him to the parade, saying “it feels good to have him with me for a day like today.”

And then, there was Jason Kelce. Draped in Mummers garb (that was mistaken by some to be a sultan costume), Kelce delivered a fiery speech on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Lengthy and expletive-laced, the speech had Kelce comparing the Birds to hungry dogs who “for 52 years have been starved of this championship.”

“No one wanted us. No one liked this team. No analyst liked this team to win the Super Bowl and nobody likes our fans,” Kelce said. “You know what I got to say to all those people who doubted us … what my man Jay Ajayi just said: F— you!”

Eagles football operations chief Howie Roseman, meanwhile, was a little more subdued in his victory speech.

“Is this,” Roseman asked, “what heaven’s like?”

Eagles heading to the Super Bowl who were on the squad in 2018 are:

Hold on now. The Birds have to actually win before we’ll get any details on a potential victory parade. But if it happens, it stands to be a good one.

As Mayor Jim Kenney recently said, he’s willing to “blow the doors off this parade.”

Overall, the 2018 parade officially lasted about two hours, and brought a number of road closures and traffic delays, so something similar could happen this year. And, of course, expect thousands of revelers packing the streets.