Eagles carry region to date with destiny

This one is for our dads. And our moms.

And our brothers. And our sisters.

This one is for everyone who bleeds green.

The franchise known as the Philadelphia Eagles, established by Bert Bell in 1933, has won three championships. None of them would be what today we call “Super.”

Let us explain.

Under the leadership of Coach “Greasy” Neale and a battering ram running back by the name of Steve Van Buren, the Eagles won back-to back NFL titles in 1948-49. A decade later, Coach Buck Shaw – with the able leadership of quarterback Norm Van Brocklin and two-way star Chuck Bednarik – captured the team’s third title, beating the legendary Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers at Franklin Field.

All of this, of course, was before the era of the Super Bowl. The NFL and AFL merged in 1966. Lombardi’s Packers crushed the Kansas City Chiefs in the first combined championship game in 1967. It wasn’t even called the Super Bowl then. That did not come along until a few years later.

It has been more than a half-century since the Eagles were called world champions. Fifty-eight years to be exact. And still the Eagles faithful believe. During all of that time, there was nary an empty seat at Franklin Field. The notorious 700 Level of Veterans Stadium was always packed. The more refined confines of Lincoln Financial Field still raucous.

There is something about football, and the Eagles, that puts this team in a different orbit.

Yes, the Flyers shattered the image of losers we toted around our necks like an albatross with back-to-back Stanley Cup championships in the mid-’70s. The Phillies have won two world championships, nearly salving the scab of 1964. The Sixers ruled the NBA in 1983.

The parties and the parades that took place after those titles were memorable. But our “Four-for-Four” zealotry remained incomplete. For nearly seven decades, we waited for the Eagles to end our drought and deliver us to football heaven.

The Eagles had been to two Super Bowls. They had lost both. It’s hard to blame Dick Vermeil’s 1980 team. They played their Super Bowl the week before, beating the hated Dallas Cowboys in the NFC title game, delivering one of the epic moments in Philadelphia sports history. They went into the Super Bowl too tight and played like it, losing to the Oakland Raiders. Twenty-four years later, Andy Reid, Donovan McNabb and Terrell Owens compiled one of the best regular seasons in team history. But they could not defeat the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl.

In between, over those 58 years, there has been more heartache, more “Why, Eagles, Why,” than “Fly, Eagles, Fly.”

This weekend, the Eagles had another shot to be “Super,” and boy were they.

Leading the team was second-year coach Doug Pederson and backup QB Nick Foles, pressed into service only after MVP candidate Carson Wentz was lost for the season with a knee injury.

Most experts believed the Eagles’ Super Bowl dream ended about the same time those ligaments in Wentz’s knee exploded.

Instead, the Eagles embraced their underdog role. Wounded Knee has turned into the Comeback Kids. The Eagles won two playoff games, earning the right to play in Super Bowl LII and erase a history of heartache for their long-suffering fans.

The city that produced Rocky has rallied around the Birds.

Green is everywhere. The Eagles fight song is on everyone’s lips. Yes, we can spell EA-G-L-E-S with the best of them.

You might say this team has cast a spell over the entire region.

If nothing else, credit the Eagles for getting us through the January doldrums.

They won one more game, just one more game, and we shed our loser’s label forever.

This one is for all those fans who have never seen the Eagles hoist a Super Bowl banner.

For all those fans who have passed on.

And for all those fans who have passed down their love of this team from one generation to the next.

Fly, Eagles Fly!