Throwback Thursday: "You Want Philly Philly?"
For the first time in any of our lives, Philly fans got head into an NFL season with the Eagles being the defending Super Bowl Champs. Unfortunately, that’ll come to an end in about 80 hours or so.
The Philly Special was a pretty…desperate play call. The Eagles knew that they needed to put another touchdown on the board before heading into halftime. The Patriots had been to the Super Bowl 7 times before Super Bowl LII and they had won 5 of them already. Doug Pederson and the Eagles knew that you can’t take any half measures against that team. They knew that you can’t become content with anything when you’re playing against Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. If you settle for just a field goal there, then they smell the blood in the water and that’s when they rip your heart out. The Eagles knew that if they didn’t want to become just another statistic of a team who was up against the Patriots at the end of the 1st half only to have that lead ripped away from them in the 2nd half, they’d need to rip a few hearts of their own. So in that sense, this play call was made out of desperation. And it worked.
It wasn’t just desperation to win a football game. It was desperation to give an entire fanbase something they’ve been waiting all their lives to see. To let an entire city know that they can be champions. I know the Phillies did that in ’08 but it’s just not the same. It was never going to be the same as the Eagles winning their first Super Bowl in Philadelphia. A direct snap to Corey Clement. A pitch to Trey Burton. And then a touchdown pass to Nick Foles in the end zone. That’s the sequence of events right that that turned the mentality around for an entire city and an entire fan base. From that point on, it was no longer “well maybe next year will be our year”. From that point on, Philly had something tangible to believe in. And it’s all thanks to the massive hog of Nick Foles and the enormous balls of Doug Pederson.