I: MID-DECEMBER 2024
One moment, among all the others, dozens or hundreds or God knows how many moments, from earlier in this Philadelphia Eagles season:
Saquon Barkley is visiting the team’s on-staff therapist. Despite fashioning a season ranking among the best-ever for an NFL running back—2,005 rushing yards in 16 games, 15 total touchdowns—Barkley wanted more. He wanted to reach flow state earlier each week.
The therapist directed Barkley toward a visualization routine. “It’s my little mantra, my little go-to place,” the running back says. “I guess you could say … it’s been working this year.”
The exercise helps Barkley differentiate between positive and negative criticism. “I’ve always had this thought, or vision, in my head,” he says. “Of this strong, powerful panther, whether it’s by itself, or roaring, or whether it’s with me.”
He begins describing his routine. Barkley sits down at his locker and closes his eyes. “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” he says, “but I’m in an old cave, with, like, a waterfall, and I’m picturing a panther.” He will transform into that picture. Not a waterfall. Not a cave. A panther. And not just any Panther. The Black Panther.
Barkley added this transformation, on top of his career-resurgence transformation, late in the 2024 regular season. He cannot recall the exact week. But after topping the Los Angeles Rams to advance to the NFC championship game, Barkley called his private trainer, Ryan Flaherty, who heard excitement, even thrill, in his client’s voice.
“Holy s---!” Barkley screamed. “It worked!”
That sentiment applies to his teammates, his quarterback, his coaches and all of Philadelphia’s football operations. All needed to grow—in many instances, far removed from football fields—in order to realign, as quarterback Jalen Hurts says, “just enough, with the talent we have” to return to the Super Bowl, with him, with Barkley, and, this time, triumph.
Consider this one of 21 moments that combined to heal the Eagles just enough—their quarterback’s words—to show the rest of professional sports exactly who they would become: Super Bowl LIX champions.
II: EARLY OCTOBER 2024
No one quite knew what to make of the Eagles after their Week 5 bye; after receiver A.J. Brown’s hamstring had healed enough for him to return to practice; after the Eagles’ new offensive coordinator, Kellen Moore, had informed the locker room of a drastic shift in offensive philosophy.
Despite last season, when a 10–1 start crumbled into an 11–6 finish and a loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the wild-card round, those who witnessed all the Eagles gathering—mid-practice, at midfield—insist that an even-but-uneven 2–2 start had not induced a shred of panic.
Don’t mistake confidence for delusion, though. Everyone at the NovaCare Complex, where Philadelphia trains and practices, saw the collection of scary, young, immense talent all over that locker room. Analysts railing about the Eagles failing to summon anywhere near their full potential weren’t wrong. The players understood this. They’d fought and scrapped and stumbled and survived even to reach 2–2.
“We had a conversation,” Saquon Barkley reveals to Sports Illustrated two days before departing for New Orleans and Super Bowl LIX.
This meeting didn’t last long, but several players spoke. Per Barkley’s recollection, and confirmed by other speakers, that group included himself, Hurts, Brown, defensive end Brandon Graham and the entire offensive line. The rest of the roster huddled around them.
The gist, per Barkley: “In 20, 30 years, we don’t want to look back and say what could have been. Let’s make sure it [stays] along the lines of us doing some special s---, as [Coach] Nick [Sirianni] said. That’s my favorite moment. That’s the moment when I knew, like, I love these guys, and it was genuine. We’re not on Hard Knocks having that meeting. I realized then that this was a turning point of our season. We ripped off 10 [wins], lost one and …”
Barkley finally breathes again. There’s so much to unpack in that detailed, thoughtful response.
So, Barkley is asked, essentially you won a championship on your bye week? Yeah, he says.
Eighteen more moments to go.
III: SPRING 2024
The architect who designed every Eagles team that has made a Super Bowl this century shared his locker room’s concerns. After signing Barkley in free agency on March 11, the two had several informal conversations. “I had given him my word that I would do whatever I possibly could to help him compete for a championship,” GM Howie Roseman says.
At 2–2, Roseman felt it necessary to reaffirm that sentiment. “I remember what I told you,” he said to Barkley. “I won’t let you down.”
In Barkley, Roseman might have pulled off the single greatest free-agent heist in NFL history. But he had long ago fulfilled that promise; it just wasn’t all that clear—yet. The latest dramatic transformation of a Philadelphia roster was ongoing. The Eagles are not a franchise content to compete for a playoff bid each season. They’re all in, either way, whether plummeting to 4-11-1 in 2020; or climbing from 2–2 this season to finish 14–3.
This overhaul wasn’t as dramatic as the two previous iterations. Those led to Super Bowl seasons in 2017 (won, Philly Special) and ’22 (lost, to these Kansas City Chiefs). Those teams featured some young players; this team relies on them.
Roseman entered this offseason with nearly $43 million in available cap space. Not bad, he thought, after committing to long-term deals with established cornerstones in recent years (Hurts, Lane Johnson, Landon Dickerson, Dallas Goedert, Brown and DeVonta Smith). Or, essentially, more than half an offense at the Pro Bowl. Even Barkley, who signed at a discount relative to concerns that now seem a bit … foolish? … agreed to three years, with $26 million of his nearly $38 million guaranteed.
Roseman utilized four of his first six picks in last spring’s NFL draft on defenders he needed to play immediately: cornerback Quinyon Mitchell (Round 1), cornerback Cooper DeJean (2), edge rusher Jalyx Hunt (3) and linebacker Jeremiah Trotter Jr. (5). Eagles executives couldn’t believe Mitchell had fallen to pick No. 22.
Philadelphia would enter this season with only three defensive starters remaining from the Super Bowl defense of two years ago. Jason Kelce had retired. So had Fletcher Cox. No big deal, Roseman says, only “maybe the greatest center in the history of the game and maybe the greatest defensive tackle in the history of the franchise.”
At the combine, coaches and executives huddled to discuss strategy. They would have to trust their young defenders, whichever ones they could add. Jalen Carter was coming on. So was Nolan Smith Jr. They had, simply, no other choice.
This season, Roseman also signed cornerback C.J. Gardner-Johnson. Not to mention a young linebacker, Zack Baun, who was projected as a situational pass rusher and special teams “demon,” as Roseman described the role to him.
The haul, with Roseman’s hit rate higher than ever before (and pretty high to start with), combined with the existing talent locked into long-term deals, meant these Eagles dripped with talent and optimism.
One problem remained unsolved. Wounds from the 2023 season—deep and open and raw, far more than anyone wanted to admit—still needed to be healed.
IV: FEB. 12, 2023
Hurts, told recently that Kansas City’s defensive coaches marveled at his performance in Super Bowl LVII, didn’t necessarily need any confirmation. Not with 374 yards from scrimmage and four total touchdowns. As Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo saw it, Hurts made one mistake that day—losing control of the ball that linebacker Nick Bolton scooped and returned for a defensive score. Otherwise, the review: flawless. “Sometimes,” Hurts says, “nearly flawless ain’t enough.”
That loss ensured two years of gnawing hunger, spiritual growth, unraveling and realignment and shifting roles and mindsets. Hurts points to challenges—of all kinds. He’s aware of the history regarding quarterbacks who lose the first Super Bowl they ever start. Only four have ever even made it back. As LIX approached, Hurts wanted to join the three—Len Dawson, Bob Griese, John Elway—who made it back and triumphed. “Hasn’t happened in my lifetime,” Hurts says.
Flash forward. Before this season, Hurts’s fiancé, Bry Burrows, wrote her future husband a note he kept and cherished. She noted what has become a critical delineation for Hurts in his Super Bowl return.
“Winning,” this note says, “is beating the opponent.”
“Improving,” this note says, “is beating yourself.”
In many, maybe even most instances, improving and winning tie together, working in lockstep, holding hands. But not always, which is where this delineation enters the conversation. “That best describes my transformation and the modification,” Hurts says, “from the outside … in.”
V: MARCH 2023-ISH
After the Super Bowl stumble, Brown returned to Florida and the gym of his private trainer, Joey Guarascio. Already a physical specimen and one of the top receivers in the NFL, Brown sought whatever nonphysical margins he could find. Which is how he ended up in Guarascio’s book club, studying mindset, athletic performance and process refinement. “Trying to focus on my mental best I can,” Brown says. “It comes with self-belief and giving myself positive affirmations, me talking to myself.”
One book stood out more than any other. Inner Excellence. Its premise: self-centeredness is the greatest challenge we face in performance and life.
Brown cracked it open. He started reading.
AJ Brown. Big book guy pic.twitter.com/rDIOy019KL
— Field Yates (@FieldYates) January 13, 2025
VI: SEPT. 20, 2020
While Hurts looked inward and Brown read books, Barkley continued both toiling for the consistently underwhelming New York Giants and rounding back toward peak form. He’d lost that in Week 2 of the 2020 season in New York. Barkley did far more than injure his right knee. He all but destroyed it.
Barkley bumped into Joe Judge, the Giants’ head coach, that afternoon. Judge noticed tears forming in Barkley’s eyes. He said, It’s gonna be a great story. Burton Burns, the RBs coach, reminded Barkley of a quote they both admired: “What now?”
He flew to Los Angeles to meet with the most in-demand surgeon in sports, Dr. Neal ElAttrache. Barkley had a kaleidoscope of damage: torn ACL, torn meniscus, torn MCL and a deep, deep exceedingly painful bone bruise.
“My heart just broke,” his trainer, Ryan Flaherty, says. “Like, man, this dude just … hasn’t caught a break.”
The bone bruise made rehabilitation longer and more taxing. Barkley couldn’t undergo surgery until the inflammation abated. That took roughly six months.
Had this injury occurred 10 or 15 years earlier, it would have ended his career. “The beauty here is it’s the present,” Barkley says. “And Dr. ElAttrache did a fantastic job putting me back together.” This included an optional procedure to suture the meniscus. Barkley believes opting in for that saved his career and will allow him to play even longer.
Rehab meant draining a painful Baker’s cyst—fluid swelling behind the knee joint—daily. Sometimes, Barkley says, pulling out 40 cc’s of fluid that forced more swelling. For those months, Barkley couldn’t bend that right knee beyond a comically low degree point—60, far closer to straight up than bent. His therapy, at that point, was similar to that of “a 75-year-old man,” Flaherty says.
VII: OCT. 10, 2021
Barkley started the Giants’ season opener in 2021, just under one year after the injury that threatened his career. Confidants encouraged him to wait. Dr. ElAttrache advised Barkley to exercise patience. “We don’t know how this is going to heal or what it’s going to take,” the doctor told Barkley and his team.
“The team wants me to play; I’m gonna play,” Barkley explained. Simple as that.
Flaherty worked for Nike then. With its help, they created a performance team for Barkley—massage therapists, chefs, nutritionists.
He’s asked where he found the patience. He laughs. What patience? “It’s hard. It’s really hard,” he says. “You got to teach yourself to walk again. You got to teach yourself to bend your knee again, to straighten out your knee.”
His had atrophied in all the light recovery work. “I lost a lot [of muscle mass],” he says. “My leg was, literally, super small. It was like that for a very long time.”
Pressed, Barkley says, “Probably smaller than my calf.”
Barkley hunted inspiration. He rewatched a favorite documentary: Kobe Bryant’s Muse. The film focuses, in part, on Kobe’s rehabilitation from a torn Achilles. His doctor: ElAttrache.
By Week 4, Barkley says, “I was making cuts like I was, you know, myself again.”
The next week, at Dallas: Barkley ran a slant route. Incomplete. He turned to find the ball, and, while he turned, he stepped, randomly and in a way he finds “low-key embarrassing,” on a defender’s foot. This was no more than brutal, bad luck. A dreaded high ankle sprain resulted. “That’s when it was like, ‘Man, O.K.,’” he says. “That’s when you start getting doubts in your head. Because that had nothing to do with football.”
This forced Barkley to consider the tougher questions. Like: “How do you really go to the depths of that darkness and get to know it?”
VIII: LATE, 2023 SEASON
Hurts had come so close to the title he most coveted: Super Bowl champion. “It was seemingly all in the palm of my hands,” he says. “And it just wasn’t my turn to take it home.”
His new obsession: getting back. He led the Eagles to 10 wins in their first 11 games of 2023. But even before the collapse started, he could sense their record masked deficiencies, infighting and misalignment, all bubbling a little more each week. “I knew what direction we were headed early in the year,” he says.
He sensed the direction Philadelphia would head when the team’s record suggested the opposite. Hurts’s focus centered on taking any measures he could to overcome. “It was,” he says now, “inevitable.”
Asked what signaled this, Hurts says, “Alignment, being on the same page.” He adds, “It was really a struggle there, trying to navigate. You’re scratching and clawing to find ways to win. But it’s so important to stay true to an identity and approach and what you’re prepared to do. And it was a challenge in navigating that as a group.”
His general manager had arrived at the same, unsteady conclusion. “At 10–1, I felt like there was a lot of meat left on the bone,” Roseman says. “We weren’t really playing our best ball, and, unfortunately, it didn’t go our way the rest of the year.” He cites a Week 15 loss to Seattle as the low point among many.
IX: MARCH 2024
The Eagles loved Barkley’s potential impact in two ways. One: his uncommon athletic greatness, combined with a healthy right knee. Two: his personality, which Roseman describes as connective. They saw him as a tethering force in a locker room where the division Hurts describes tore apart that 10–1 start. “Such a no-brainer,” Roseman says, referring to the signing.
X: October 2024
Throughout Hurts’s decorated, doubted, overcome-anything career, improving as a quarterback assumed paramount importance. “To be great, there are priorities,” he says. “But I got to this point where … it became … I didn’t remove the importance of improving. But what happened was, the desire to win only intensified. It burns stronger than it ever burned before.”
This isn’t something he does too often, sit down and open up a vein. But it’s important, the distinction he’s explaining. “My whole life has always been about improving,” he says. “My dad instilled that in me, since I was very young.”
“That’s how I feel, man. That internal drive, improving, is as essential as anything you can have in pursuit of trying to do great things. For me, what has evolved, what I’ve been able to transform, [is] my mentality.”
From 2022 to ’23 into ’24, Hurts saw himself as one constant amid persistent change. Had it been avoided, he says, so might have last season’s collapse. In all those years of improving as a quarterback, whatever skill Hurts improved also helped his team. But when Brian Johnson became offensive coordinator in ’23, Johnson’s vision didn’t align well with Sirianni’s, and the frustration in Hurts began to build. (Johnson’s relationship with Hurts, meanwhile, dated back decades, to when Johnson played for Hurts’s father, back in high school, becoming a mentor for Jalen before he went to college.)
Of this 2024 season, Hurts says, “That’s been the biggest difference. Everything I do has been done with winning in mind. How can I influence [success], in whatever way I’m instructed, to help us win? That’s the truth.”
Hurts did that through spiritual growth, through attempting to understand how players or coaches he dealt with preferred to communicate, so he could best reach them. He also had to open himself to their feedback, honest as it might be. He cites “some great moments and conversations had amongst leaders on this team and leaders of the organization in this building.”
“[Those conversations] were invested to have an opportunity to do what we’re doing right now,” he says. “When you have those conversations, you can come closer to being in alignment, not necessarily guaranteeing anything one way or the other. But people being heard and navigating those things so we can achieve what we say is a common goal.”
Elements beyond tough conversations, relayed by two sources with direct knowledge of last season in Philadelphia, included: meetings of the team’s leadership council with coaches and executives … one players-only meeting late last season … repairing of relationships between star players … and, this, from 2024. “Saquon,” one source says, “healed them.”
XI: OCT. 13, 2024
It didn't take long—sometime in his first week back at practice—for Brown to see Barkley’s in-game impact, up close, after a month of incorporating him into Philadelphia’s offense. The receiver didn’t need to see, hear or experience anything else. He would embrace every block the coaches asked of him. He would catch every target that came his way. He would focus on his effort, what he, A.J. Brown, could actually control. He could forgive himself for any mistakes made along the way.
“I took a step back,” he says, “and now it’s like, Man, here we go again? You know?”
Brown soon reached an internal understanding. It had been sitting there, obvious and not obvious, all along. “You know, it’s really hard to complain when you win, especially in this league,” Brown says. “Like, I gotta hold my tongue and sit this one out and I’ve gotta make the most of every single opportunity I get.”
Adjusting to the notion of schematic change took time. Becoming comfortable with that scheme took even more. By the time the playoffs started, Brown says, he knew his instincts had led him to precisely the right place. “I wouldn’t call this an adverse situation,” Brown says. “Everything is flowing, right?”
So what’s he reading now?
“The playbook,” he says, and he is laughing.
XII: NOV. 3, 2024
One Philadelphia strength coach told Barkley he was persistent but not consistent, and that he needed to become more consistent.
“How can I be more consistent?” Barkley asked.
That work began immediately. This spring, Barkley began keeping a personal journal. Consider this an addendum to his actual schedule. He scribbles eight to 10 thoughts or questions every morning and repeats the exercise at night. One example, from Barkley to SI: What’s one word you want to be today? He does this, Barkley says, to be “consistent and locking into process and routine.”
Week 9, in a win over the Jacksonville Jaguars. Barkley fumbled, and he fumbled in precisely the same way as he had a year earlier against the Green Bay Packers. The first fumble devastated him. “The environment makes you feel that way, too,” he says. “And that’s the environment I was in.”
He ignored the second, picked up 159 rushing yards and scored twice. He also turned in one of the most audacious plays in NFL history. It has been called a hurdle, which woefully undersells his spinning, backward, reverse leap over another human being. Barkley says the technique comes from elite long jumpers.
“What he did,” Flaherty says, “is insane.” So much so that two actual Olympic long jumpers Flaherty works with asked him if he could persuade Barkley to attempt a real jump this offseason. His technique: flawless.
“I’ve thought about this a lot since,” Flaherty says. “Not just the ‘hurdle,’ but everything, in combination, just putting it all together and looking at the work of art this year has been for him. He was almost like observing himself in that moment. And that means he was present.”
XIII: DEC. 16, 2024
This Monday, like every other Monday, Sirianni hits pause on more typical film review sessions and focuses on moments that have tethered this season’s team. He’ll show clips of Eagles celebrating together, praising each other in interviews, any highlights from the “brotherhood” he sought to enhance all season.
Sirianni made culture his offseason focus. He read books on football leadership, including Bill Walsh’s coaching bible, Finding The Winning Edge.
He suggested Kellen Moore as offensive coordinator, owner Jeffrey Lurie says, despite both having interviewed for the same job, the one that went to Sirianni in 2021. He held team leadership sessions during OTAs. Sometimes, the Eagles dove deep on their core values and how to further develop them. Sometimes, guest speakers—Jay Wright, Dawn Staley, his college football coach—imparted messages of resilience. “You just try to constantly grow,” Sirianni says.
Sirianni also took accountability for last season’s collapse, and he did so, as he always does, from the center of the locker room. He understood that the offense needed to evolve. He sat in on fewer meetings. Moore installed his passing offense. Then, after the switch to a more run-heavy approach during that Week 5 bye, Sirianni and Moore married the run concepts that worked well for Sirianni last season with Moore’s passing-game enhancements.
These shifts—with Vic Fangio primarily in charge of the defense and Moore primarily in charge of the offense—Sirianni says, were designed for improvement as a head coach. He needed to take a wider, more holistic view. He encouraged feedback from the locker room. One player suggested a team lunch in the offseason. The Eagles did that. Another suggested a schedule tweak—team meetings held Wednesday through Monday—that Sirianni adopted.
XIV: DEC. 28, 2024
The night before the Eagles hosted the Dallas Cowboys, at the Saturday team meeting, Sirianni could sense this exercise in optimizing talent through personal growth, communication and emotional intelligence was … working? “I just felt this energy, this togetherness, this focus—while also still being loose,” he says. “I remember thinking, “Yeah, this group is becoming a team.”
He’s asked whether he might consider becoming a therapist if the football thing goes sideways. Were he to go back to college, where he majored in education, he would add a minor, he says. In psychology.
XV: Jan. 5, 2025
In Week 18, when Barkley could have taken realistic aim at a single-season rushing record that has stood for 40 years, he sat out the finale, with the Eagles locked into the No. 2 seed in the NFC. Barkley tells SI he wanted to go for the record, wanted to break it. Initially, at least. He didn’t argue with or even really disagree with the coaches’ decision. Then he spoke with family members, friends, teammates, and he came to realize many of them, like the Eagles’ NFL-best offensive line, wanted that record, too. So Barkley changed his mind again.
Sirianni asked Barkley that day if he had a preference.
Barkley told the truth. “I want it,” he said. “I want to break the record.”
Sirianni listened and … disagreed. Barkley says he immediately moved on. Not having to make the decision actually made life easier. He didn’t have to risk injury—or the consequence of going for the record only to ruin a potential Super Bowl season.
XVI: Jan. 19, 2025
Baun came to Philadelphia on a one-year contract. He didn’t spend a single day as a situational pass rusher. Instead, Fangio took one look at his frame and his skill set and made Baun an inside linebacker. Only 28 years old, he joined a defense stocked with young starters. Each played as if they’d never proved anything. Fangio taught them discipline. They brought energy and effort.
For these Eagles, the litmus test came in Week 13, at Baltimore. They won that game, while holding the Ravens and their peak rushing offense to 19 points. But it was another game that really highlighted the young defense—at home, in the divisional round, against the Rams, in the snow.
The young Eagles defenders didn’t gripe about the cold. No, they turned it into something more like a Turkey Day football game between old friends. “There’s nothing in the world that’s more fun,” Baun says. “Just pure joy.”
“I love that,” Sirianni says, when relayed Baun’s sentiment.
XVII: Jan. 26, 2025
The day when all these disparate threads of struggle and growth, talent optimized by, yes, emotional intelligence, this grand experiment in Philadelphia yielded the kind of team the Eagles believed they were all along. Barkley ripped off yet another long touchdown run, while scoring three times. Hurts was accurate, scored four touchdowns of his own and found—guess who—Brown for 96 receiving yards and another score. Philly set a record for points in an NFC championship game in a 55–23 decimation of the Washington Commanders.
“That’s,” Hurts says, “what separates the heroes from the legends.”
Barkley and the Eagles had found an answer to the question he posed to himself as injuries threatened all his plans. “Understanding that it’s a part of you,” he says. “Like how that shapes who you are. Using it to bring that darkness out into the light, to get a fuller picture of … what humanity is, to better understand yourself, your strengths and what your darkness really isn’t, as opposed to … how you want it.”
If Hurts, Barkley, Brown and their teammates didn’t come to accept the team’s direction in each of those individual moments; if they didn’t work, individually and together, to embrace whatever role they were assigned; they’re not in another Super Bowl. They don’t go on to win the franchise’s second in eight seasons. Period. Point blank.
Sirianni, now a better head coach in a more holistic way, even received a Gatorade shower. That the players accidentally hit him in the head with the Gatorade bucket only added to the delirium, the kind borne from a Super Bowl defeat into a collapse from 10–1 into this, perhaps the most emotionally charged and emotionally healthy run in NFL history.
XVIII: Feb. 1, 2025
Hurts, when asked what to watch for in Super Bowl LIX, looks down, looks up and says, simply but directly, “No. 1.”
XIX: FEB. 7, 2025
Almost exactly two years ago, Lurie watched his Eagles lose a Super Bowl, in part, because of a defensive holding call that’s still being debated. He was angry. He moved on. He tried, anyway, because Lurie prides himself on his resilience. “You know, we don’t talk about it a lot,” he says at the Saints’ training facility before the Eagles’ final practice, “but, I think, within ourselves, there’s a lot of emotion from that loss. It fuels a lot of our resilience.”
Sometimes, Lurie might wish he wasn’t so steeped, so early, in that concept. In a powerful moment, he says he learned resilience at age 9, when his father and grandfather died within three months of each other. Painful doesn’t begin to describe that time. And, yet, he’s grateful, too, because that time taught him just how fragile life is, whether it’s an immediate family or a football team that feels the same way. He calls this a “gift left behind by those that didn’t survive.”
Philadelphia sports fans, despite their well-earned reputation, seem happier with Lurie than anyone else besides Barkley on the local sports scene. He loves them right back, as evidenced by his noting that the Eagles played in one-third of all conference championship games this century. “This is hard to do when you don’t have Tom Brady,” Lurie says, and, somewhere, a Philly sports fanatic is searching for Jason Kelce to bump chests.
XX: Feb. 9, 2025
By the mid-point of the second quarter Sunday night, every time Patrick Mahomes dropped back, the Eagles’ pressure followed him, enveloped him, wrapped around his superhero cape and rendered his typical magic moot. Philadelphia’s defense, just as young and rabid in Super Bowl LIX as it had been all season long, continued to chase, hunt, strike, crash into and takedown football’s most famous quarterback. The K.C. drive that started with 8:38 remaining on the second-quarter clock went like this: first down, sack; second down, sack; third down … Mahomes, again, under pressure, Mahomes, again, trying to scramble toward enough open space to throw, Mahomes, again, lobbing the kind of dicey, questionable pass he almost always avoids throwing at this point in his career.
On this throw, it appeared Mahomes didn’t see rookie nickelback Cooper DeJean. He sat there, down the field, lurking, waiting, until Mahomes threw a pass—right to that zone, right toward DeJean—that should never have left his hand.
Cooper DeJean picked quite a time for his first NFL interception. pic.twitter.com/ujyNLT7ger
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) February 10, 2025
DeJean, in many ways, was already emblematic of this Eagles season. From Odebolt, Iowa, population under 1,000, city center spanning one square mile. Four-sport athlete at a high school that draws from four nearby towns. From there, all the way to first-team All-Big Ten, as a star cornerback/returner for the Iowa Hawkeyes. Fractured fibula near the end of his college career. Resilient. Versatile. Skilled. Unabashedly himself. Turned 22 on Super Bowl Sunday.
In terms of what Roseman always looks for, DeJean checked every box. The Eagles, Roseman says, gave DeJean, their second-round pick, and Mitchell, their first-rounder, the exact same grade. DeJean would have been selected earlier, if not for the fractured leg. As it was, Roseman traded up on Day 2 to snag him with the 40th pick.
That pass Mahomes threw in the second quarter floated toward him. Perhaps DeJean considered his path to Super Bowl LIX. Still injured when training camp started. Nickel corner role. Didn’t play significant snaps on defense until after that Week 5 bye, this week that seems more and more transformative every day. DeJean body-slammed Derrick Henry in a seminal Week 13 thumping of the Ravens. He forced a fumble in that important victory over Jacksonville.
And, in the Super Bowl, against Mahomes and the mighty Chiefs, not far removed at all from fracturing his fibula, DeJean read the play, stepped from the shadows, grabbed an interception and took off down the field. A defensive teammate dislodged the only Kansas City offensive lineman who had a chance to tackle DeJean, dislodged that man from his feet. DeJean could have stopped, poured himself a drink and still scored. His touchdown gave Philly a 17–0 lead that already made the game feel out of reach. Only the final score, 40–22, remained up for any debate the rest of the way.
As DeJean bound to an elated sideline after his pick-six, he found his coordinator, Fangio, the man who tied together all these young defenders. Fangio began his NFL coaching career in this very stadium, as a Saints assistant. The same place his only other Super Bowl defense—San Francisco—blew a lead against the Baltimore Ravens after the lights went out 12 years ago. Fangio moved Baun to inside linebacker. He made DeJean his nickelback. He turned Jalen Carter and Nolan Smith Jr. and Josh Sweat into a legitimate force—Sweat, in fact, might have been the Eagles’ single-most impactful defender Sunday.
This was the Eagles’ season, 2024. All of it. In one play. Philly didn’t need to blitz. It was the blitz that upended a dynasty and ended the Chiefs’ three-peat ambitions.
XXI: Feb. 9, 2025
Jalen Hurts, by the numbers, as of Sunday night:
First Eagles quarterback to reach two Super Bowls …
Fifth QB ever to reach two Super Bowls before turning 27 …
Most postseason rushing touchdowns for a quarterback with 10 …
Highest winning percentage in Philadelphia’s franchise history at .696 …
Super Bowl LIX MVP …
Fourth quarterback in NFL history to lose his first Super Bowl start, come back and triumph …
Third quarterback, ever, to do that in his very next Super Bowl appearance …
Watch out for “No. 1,” indeed. Hurts can finally change the screensaver on his cell phone. For the past two years it featured him in the aftermath of losing Super Bowl LVII. May we suggest: winning is beating your opponent … improving is beating yourself.
For the self-help Super Bowl champions, talent always mattered most. Always does. But Philadelphia doesn’t need to look any further back than last season to realize that talent, by itself, isn’t always enough.
Barkley fortified his mindset.
Hurts found acceptance in all those wins.
Brown came to laugh when Barkley got after teammates. It felt good, he says, to not always assume that role.
Sirianni bolstered trust with vulnerability.
Each gave. Each sacrificed. Each bent, just enough, so that the Black Panther could come in, merge with an elite quarterback and an elite offensive line and that young, hungry, pesky defense and take all that had fractured in Philadelphia last season and heal it, heal them.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as The 21 Moments That Helped the Eagles Win Their Second Super Bowl.