Better or not, these Super Eagles more fan friendly
Just over a week before the Eagles would play in a Super Bowl, there was Doug Pederson in the Wells Fargo Center for a hockey game. He was rocking an orange Flyers jersey. There was no more evidence necessary to prove why the Eagles are not as annoying as they were the last time they played for a world championship.
The arrogance is gone. The War of 11th and Pattison is over. And the ridiculous behavior of so many Eagles front men of the 2004-2005 NFC champions has cased.
Then, the Birds were quarterbacked by Donovan McNabb, whose distaste for Philadelphia was thick. He never recovered from hearing boos the day he was drafted No. 2 overall, and he still holds a grudge. It’s why he spent much of this season on TV, consistently trolling Eagles fans, finding any reason to diminish the onfield grandeur of Carson Wentz.
Then, the Eagles were coached by Andy Reid, a self-important underachiever who actively limited his postgame comments while well aware that a market full of Eagles fans simply wanted to hear him explain how he’d wasted so many timeouts. His record could have made him popular. He declined to be popular. He had to do a better job.
Then, the Eagles’ football operation was run by Joe Banner, who oversaw a repugnant marketing ploy to subliminally big-time the other major-league teams on his street. “One team, one city, one dream,” was that mouthful, and its implication was plain: Only the Eagles mattered to the seven million people of the four-state region.
The Eagles were always charitable. They had their off-field episodes, as all teams do, but those were on the low side by profootball standards. Their fans were loyal; their fans are always loyal. But even if it is only urban legend that anyone wearing a Phillies cap to work was turned away from the NewsControl Compound during the 2008 worldchampionship baseball season unfolding across the street, that image endured of them being selfabsorbed.
This time? It’s different. And it breaks both ways. The Phillies have decorated Citizens Bank Park with a Go Eagles flag. Nightly, Sixers coach Brett Brown sprinkles his public comments with support of the Eagles and Philadelphia fans. The quarterback is Nick Foles, who so truly loves the city that he wanted to play no place else. And Pederson always answers reasonable football questions … and, it seems, might have some hockey opinions, too.
This time, unlike the last time, the Eagles get it.