Eagles fans came to State Farm Stadium with smiles and left in anger

GLENDALE, Ariz. — They came early, happily standing in line five hours before kickoff, and some stayed until the last pieces of confetti fluttered down from the rigging high above State Farm Stadium.

Red and yellow confetti.

“I can’t,” said Gail McFadden, 76, of Northeast Philly. “I can’t even look at it.”

Some Eagles fans filed up the stairs into the concourse before Harrison Butker’s game-winning field goal. McFadden’s son, Mike, said he needed to get a drink, to wash away the disappointment.

“We didn’t want it,” he said. “We didn’t want it bad enough.”

As soon as the gates opened Sunday afternoon, fans poured in, making the atmosphere almost feel like a home game at Lincoln Financial Field.

“We’re here to see an Eagles win,” Rob Tierno, 58, of Glassboro, said. “We are diehard.”

Tierno and his son, Robbie, were among the first Eagles fans to get in, standing in line at 11:30 a.m.

Fans came from Spokane and Downingtown and Fresno: fathers, sons, daughters and longtime friends. They brought green garden gnomes for good luck, and propped little Eagles in their hair. One fan came to win Bradley Cooper’s heart: “I figure he’s sick of the supermodels.” They burst into E-A-G-L-E-S! chants in the bustling concourse, easily outnumbering Kansas City fans.

Before the game, some sat alone, taking it in like a solemn Sunday.

“I can feel it,” said Frank Budd Jr., whose father was a wide receiver for the Eagles in 1962. “All those ghosts of our past. They’re coming here to lift us up.”

Mark Trible, a freelance sports reporter from Fishtown, debated whether to fly to Arizona for the game. He looked at a photo of himself, in Eagles gear as a kid in the 1990s, and decided he had to get a ticket.

“If that little kid back then knew that I would have an opportunity to go to the Super Bowl, he wouldn’t believe it,” Trible said at a pregame tailgate in Glendale. “I’m doing this for him.”

Fans were feeling confident early, after Jalen Hurts punched one in in the first quarter.

“It’s simple,” said James Schnaedter, 30, of Chicago. “They don’t have what it takes to stop us.”

But minutes later, Kansas City tied the game, and the remainder of the first half was the ballgame everyone suspected it would be: back and forth with highs and lows for both teams.

At the end, hours after they waited in line, full of hope, Rob and Robbie Tierno stood quietly in the concourse, dejected.

“I’m tired,” Robbie, 19, said. “We don’t want to see any of this.”