PHILADELPHIA — This week the Birds are barking about how they knew from the start they had the goods to make it to Super Bowl LVII.
Funny. A month into the season, it was just Miles Sanders and me.
We’re the only ones I could find who believed the Eagles were the NFC’s best team, and, by association, the Super Bowl favorite. The Birds had gone 4-0 for the first time since 2004, which, of course, ended with their first Super Bowl trip in 24 years, but after just four wins in 2022 they weren’t ready to declare their dominance.
I polled the locker room in the week between Games 4 and 5. I asked veterans if the Eagles, a 9-8 playoff bust in 2021, were the NFC’s best team in 2022. Most declined to even answer. The ones who did were, typically, timid.
“I don’t know about that,” said center Jason Kelce. “I know we’re a damn good team.”
Sanders was not timid.
“I don’t think anybody can beat us right now,” he said.
Neither did I.
We were right.
They ran out to an 8-0 start. They were 13-1 when MVP favorite Jalen Hurts suffered his shoulder injury, lost twice without him, then clinched the No. 1 seed when he returned for the season finale. With Hurts, they clearly were the best team in the conference, if not the entire NFL.
They might have known it. They just couldn’t admit it.
Maybe they had self-doubt. Maybe they didn’t think their close home win the week before over Jacksonville proved much, but they’d run all over the No. 1 run defense and they’d beaten a team that eventually won its division and a playoff game.
Maybe they were supremely confident and just didn’t want to sound like they were bragging.
At any rate, they’re crowing like peacocks now.
Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie looked at the comparative talent on paper, and dared to dream early.
“To be honest with you, I said to a few people back in September, including Nick and Howie, ‘We have the best roster in the league,’“ Lurie said Sunday after the Eagles beat the 49ers in the NFC championship game. “It takes a lot beyond that. You have to have a great collection of players and coaches who really want it, in a huge way. I told them, ‘No. 1 seed has got to be our goal.’”
And when did reaching that goal seem likely? They were 6-0 at the bye week. Was it then that he dared to dream?
“I did. I did,” Lurie said. “But I thought, even in September, the No. 1 seed was the only thing to shoot for.”
Lurie marveled at the roster Howie Roseman was able to assemble. He signed free-agent edge rusher Haason Reddick; cut, then re-signed defensive tackle Fletcher Cox; traded for Pro Bowl receiver A.J. Brown; waited for the Giants to cut cornerback James Bradberry, a salary-cap burden; and stole safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson from the Saints.
“I knew at camp,” Reddick said. “All offseason, we continued to watch Howie make moves like Howie do. I was first, and then A.J. ... now this.”
“Yeah, for me, it was draft day, when we traded for A.J.,” tight end Dallas Goedert said.
Bradberry is in his seventh season and with his third team, and this time he was pretty sure he was on the best team, but he recognized that the roster needed to jell, and that task would be falling to second-year head coach and T-shirt aficionado Nick Sirianni.
“Of course, I don’t want to be, like, ‘I knew from the jump we could get to the Super Bowl,’ but I knew we had the talent,” Bradberry said. “It was about us going out there and executing. I gained more confidence each and every week.”
So?
“The first week I was here the offense put up 38 [in Detroit]. Any time you have an offense that can put up 30 points ...”
The Eagles blew out the Vikings in Game 2, then foreshadowed their 2022 signature stat: They led the NFL with 70 sacks.
“Then we played Washington two weeks later, and the front seven got after the quarterback and had [nine] sacks,” Bradberry said, referring to Carson Wentz’s inglorious reintroduction to the team he’d betrayed two seasons prior. “I knew at that point I could play more aggressively. But at the bye week, yeah, the confidence was high.”
Some of the players have been cautious with their confidence all season. They know how tenuous a trip back to the top can be. One injury, one bad penalty, one missed call and ... poof.
Lane Johnson wasn’t sure they’d make it at all.
“I knew we were going have the possibility to do some things. Just had to blend the talent,” Johnson said. “It’s five years later. You don’t realize how fast time flies.”
Brandon Graham punctuated Super Bowl LII with a strip-sack of Tom Brady, then watched a Hail Mary to Rob Gronkowski fall to earth in the end zone. But it wasn’t until the Birds led by 21 points with 15 minutes to play against a 49ers team that was without a serviceable quarterback that Graham believed the Birds were a team of destiny.
“When did I think we’d go back? I don’t know,” Graham said Sunday.
“I guess the fourth quarter today.”
