Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley (26) rushes for a...

Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley (26) rushes for a touchdown against the Washington Commanders during the second half of the NFC Championship NFL football game, Sunday, Jan. 26, 2025, in Philadelphia. Credit: AP/Derik Hamilton

Three Eagles players will celebrate their birthdays on Super Bowl Sunday. Running back Saquon Barkley, the former Giant and the biggest addition to this year’s team in free agency, will turn 28. Rookie cornerback and punt returner Cooper DeJean, a second-round pick out of Iowa, will turn 22. Safety Andre Sam, in his second season on the team’s practice squad, will turn 26. Barkley said he realized the concurrence early this season and took it as a sign of his destiny to play in the game. Now he is planning on how to celebrate the two events. “If we take care of business,” he said after winning the NFC championship, “everything is on me.” 

 

The Eagles are the only team that beat Vince Lombardi in the postseason, handing the legendary Packers coach a 17-13 loss for the 1960 NFL championship. That was Lombardi’s second year as head coach in Green Bay and his first playoff game with the team. The Eagles’ victory came at Franklin Field in Philadelphia behind Ted Dean’s game-winning touchdown in the fourth quarter. Norm Van Brocklin completed only nine of 20 passes with a touchdown and an interception but was named MVP of the game. Lombardi’s Packers won the next two NFL championships, then three straight from 1965-67 (the last two in the first and second Super Bowls) without Lombardi ever losing a playoff game again. Lombardi’s career postseason record stands at 9-1. The Eagles had to wait 57 years before winning another title in Super Bowl LII.

 

With three rushing touchdowns in the NFC Championship Game last week, Jalen Hurts has nine such scores in his playoff career. Not only is that the NFL record for quarterbacks surpassing Steve Young’s previous mark of eight, but it is tied for ninth-most among all players, including running backs. Hurts needs two more to tie for seventh with Marcus Allen and LeGarrette Blount at 11. If he gets three more, he’ll be tied for fourth overall with Terrell Davis, Marshawn Lynch and John Riggins at 12. Only Franco Harris and Thurman Thomas with 16 each and record-holder Emmitt Smith with 19 have more.

 

The now-ubiquitous Eagles fight song, “Fly, Eagles, Fly,” was written by Charles Borelli and Roger Courtland as “Fight, Eagles, Fight” when it debuted in the 1950s. While it disappeared from official use in the late 1960s and was performed only sporadically by fans and pep bands, the team reintroduced the tune in the late 1990s with the new lyrics and a peppier beat. It has been sung after every Eagles home touchdown since 1998.

 

Eagles All-Pro left tackle Jordan Mailata is looking to become the first Australian to win a Super Bowl. Others from Down Under have appeared in the game — punters Ben Graham with the Cardinals in 2009, Mitch Wishnowsky with the 49ers in 2020 and last year, and Arryn Siposs with the Eagles on the Super Bowl LVIII team that Mailata himself was part of — but none has ever gotten to hold the Lombardi Trophy.

 

Super Bowl LIX likely will have about 120 million television viewers (last year’s game set the record with 123.7 million). That’s a lot more than the estimated 500 who tuned in on the 1,000 or so active sets in New York City in 1939 for the first NFL game ever televised ... which also featured the Eagles in a game against the Brooklyn Football Dodgers at Ebbets Field. On Oct. 22, 1939, the Eagles lost to the Dodgers, 23-14. The National Broadcasting Company used an eight-man crew to film the contest and air it on a New York City affiliate. Called by announcer Allen Walz, the game lasted just over 2 1⁄2 hours and had no commercials. By the end of the game, the sun had set and it was too dark for the cameras to pick up any of the images from the field, so people essentially were listening to Walz’s radio call on their television sets.

 

Turns out the Eagles were around a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. The supervising sound editor for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” was Eagles fan David Acord, and he planted references to his favorite team in each of those films. In “The Force Awakens,” he had to develop an alien language for the character Teeto, and the lizard-like villain can be heard saying “Celek” and “Fletcher” in homage to former Eagles Brent Celek and Fletcher Cox. In “Rogue One,” he had to create a prayer chant heard in the background in Jedha City. Acord not only voiced that chant but wrote it by translating part of the Eagles’ fight song — “Hit ’em high, hit ’em low” — into the universal language of Esperanto created in the late 1800s.

 

The current Eagles logo, established in 1996, is the only one in the NFL that faces to the left. All of the other teams named after animals (Cardinals, Falcons, Bills, Panthers, Ravens, Broncos, Lions, Jaguars, Dolphins, Rams and Seahawks) along with all the ones that have people in their designs (Patriots and Vikings) face to the right. The reason? It’s said that the three feathers on the back of the bird’s head in the logo are meant to evoke the letter E . . . as in Eagles.

 

In 1936, the Eagles used the first overall pick in the very first NFL Draft on a Hall of Famer who never appeared in a game for them or any other team. They chose running back Jay Berwanger from the University of Chicago but couldn’t meet his salary demand of $1,000 per game, so the Eagles traded his rights to the Bears. Berwanger did not sign there either. He instead tried out for the 1936 Olympic team as a decathlete (he did not make it) and later played rugby. In 2016, Berwanger was inducted into the Rugby Hall of Fame.

 

When the Eagles were put up for sale after the death of owner James P. Clark in 1962, one of the parties interested in buying the team was sitting U.S. President John F. Kennedy along with his brothers Robert and Ted. According to a 2013 NFL Network program, President Kennedy was worried that he’d be “bored” after a potential second term in office, at which point he would have been only 51 years old, and he thought owning an NFL team would be a good second career. He asked his youngest brother Ted to set up a meeting with Eagles management to discuss the possibility, but that meeting never took place because Kennedy had to deal with another matter that fall: the Cuban Missile Crisis. Jerry Wolman eventually bought the team for $5.5 million in 1963.

SUBSCRIBE

Unlimited Digital AccessOnly 25¢for 6 months

ACT NOWSALE ENDS SOON | CANCEL ANYTIME