Philly Special: The Inside Story of How the Philadelphia Eagles Won Their First Super Bowl Championship
336
Philly Special: The Inside Story of How the Philadelphia Eagles Won Their First Super Bowl Championship
336eBook
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781641252980 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Triumph Books |
| Publication date: | 09/03/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 336 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
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CHAPTER 1
The Wentz Wagon Hits the Road
The Eagles at the Redskins Sunday, September 10, 2017 • Landover, Maryland
"The dude is a stud."
That's what Nick Foles said about Carson Wentz.
On Sunday, September 10, 2017, before he would transform himself into a full-blown NFL stud, before he would become the leading candidate for league MVP in just his second year in the league, before he would lead the Philadelphia Eagles on the most implausible nine-game winning streak anybody could contemplate, Carson Wentz would have to do something he did not do once his entire rookie season: Win a division game on the road.
It was one of those swampy, humid early September mornings in the suburbs of the nation's capital and Wentz was wearing big designer headphones, listening to gospel music, running along the sidelines of FedEx Field, getting ready for a game that his head coach, Doug Pederson, was about to tell his team was vitally important if the Eagles were going to make any kind of trouble in the always volatile NFC East. The Eagles, Washington Redskins, New York Giants, and Dallas Cowboys have traded division titles off and on for the last 13 seasons. Indeed, the NFC East has been the only division in the NFL without a repeat title winner during that time. In short, the division is the dictionary definition of dog eat dog in professional football. And step one to winning a division title, to making the playoffs: Win on the road Week 1 in Washington.
Wentz, who has the bow-legged gallop of a wild mare, finished the individual and team drills and sprinted with his teammates and the coaching staff to the visitors' locker room. The chief of Eagles security Dom DiSandro — known as "Big Dom" because he looks like he could be the bouncer at any high-end Manhattan nightclub — closed the door behind them.
And that's when Doug Pederson began laying down the law. His speech was passionate, but to the point. He gave the 2017 Eagles three marching orders:
"OK," he said, "we got to do something we didn't do very well last year. We got to start fast. We talked about it all summer. Start fast, finish strong."
In 2016, Pederson and Wentz stormed onto the scene with three straight wins to start the season, but then tailed off badly, losing six of eight games in November and December that doomed the promise of both their rookie campaigns. The Eagles made a habit of getting off to dismal starts and playing from behind. That forced the team to rely more and more on Wentz — as a passer and a runner — and it was clearly too much for him. Remember, he had last played at North Dakota State, a notch below Division I college football. He had never before been tested like this physically and mentally. The city, the team, the league had fallen in love with No. 11 — his jersey was near the top of all sellers in the NFL, alongside Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, and J.J. Watt. But he couldn't carry the team alone. Indeed, after the season was over, Pederson had told Wentz to "put down the football and get away from the game for a while," to rest his mind and body.
Wentz had heard about the all-consuming nature of the football fans in Philadelphia. He thought he was ready for it. He was not. At times, it overwhelmed him, especially when he thought it was time to get re-dedicated to the only task that mattered: Winning the city's first Super Bowl title.
"It's cool," he said. He said he and his teammates and family have talked about it a lot. "You've read about it. And everyone's talking about it non-stop. And then playing for a full season, it was real. I was a part of it. I told the story last year when Nelson [Agholor] dropped the ball in practice and they booed him at open practice. I was like, 'All right, this is real. The real deal.'"
But Wentz also remembers the last game of 2016, on New Year's Day. The Cowboys were in town. Both teams were out of the playoffs. "The place was packed," said Wentz. "I'll always remember that. Are they hard?" referring to the fans. "Sometimes. That's part of it. But I wouldn't have it any other way."
Pederson's advice after the 2016 season had worked. But now the head coach was asking Wentz to re-ignite that early 2016 fire and propel this team to another fast start.
"And we got to play with passion," Pederson continued in his team meeting. "We got to want it for 60 minutes. Especially when the other team gets tired in the fourth quarter. We got to bring the passion."
Pederson finished with a warning: "I want to see how we respond when a little adversity comes."
Looking back on how the 2017 season played out, it's quite amazing that Pederson's first three talking points to what would become a championship team were exactly what needed to be said and would carry through all 16 games of the regular season, the playoffs, and Super Bowl LII.
His teams would start fast, play with passion, and be challenged by a historical level of adversity — beginning with the first game of the year against a gnarly Redskins team that had just as much to prove.
* * *
Not everybody was all in on Carson Wentz, Year 2. Not by a long shot. There were three major unresolved issues: Mechanics, a lack of accuracy on his long ball, and durability. Wentz was exposing his body too much, taking too many hits.
All of those question marks were raised during one single play against the Redskins, who were on a five-game winning streak against the Eagles. Philadelphia had not beaten Washington since September 21, 2014, 37–34. And the last win in Washington was the September before that: 33–27. These games were always one-score battles of attrition.
And I had a ground level view. As luck would have it, I got the last-minute assignment to be the ESPN radio sideline reporter for this game. My broadcast partners were the incomparable Adam Amin and the Hall of Famer Bill Polian, a former six-time NFL Executive of the Year.
When you're on the sideline, you get to hear, feel, see, and smell the game in a completely different way. An NFL game is a carnival of color and anger, an often-confusing collision of bumper cars — without the cars. It's a fully engaged symphony — an orchestration that requires instant improvisation based on what the coaches and players see and experience. It's a chess match with one important difference: The other guy is trying to knock you out.
The American game of football, especially at the NFL level, is the last team sport on earth where it is legislatively okay to commit a violent act. "Your job is to take the other man down," said former Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in the summer of 2018. "Take him down to the ground. Take him down violently. And take away the football violently. It's an act of violence. And in an act of violence, a man will eventually get hurt."
But football is also a game of specifically designed movements, a syncopation of timed events within clearly delineated spaces. It's not a mass movement game like soccer or basketball or rugby. Timing is critical. Until it's not. That's when a player just has to go out and make a play. It's a cliché. But it's true. The team with the best players almost always wins.
And there is nothing more important in the game of improvisation than what happens between a quarterback and a wide receiver on a deep pass down the field.
The quarterback has to have the right technique — footwork and release of the ball. The ball has to have the right trajectory. The wide receiver has to have the right release off the snap — the slightest hesitation or interference from a defensive back can ruin the timing. A second lost here or there and the connection is doomed.
NFL teams such as the Eagles practice throwing the ball deep hundreds of times in spring practices, in training camp, in preseason games, practice during the week, pregame warm-ups — until it all becomes second nature, until the muscle memory is so familiar it's like taking the dog for a walk or eating a bowl of Cheerios. And even then, it's often a miracle if it all works seamlessly in the game.
* * *
It was the Eagles' first offensive play from scrimmage, first-and-10 from their own 44-yard line. Wide receiver Torrey Smith — a brilliant off-season acquisition by vice president for football operations Howie Roseman who had already won a Super Bowl in Baltimore — had beaten the loud-mouthed Redskins cornerback Josh Norman right down the middle of the field, a seam route that had given Wentz fits the previous year. With Smith screaming toward the end zone wide open, Wentz had a clear shot. He took it. But the ball never got there and Smith never had a chance.
The same deep ball mechanics that he had spent all off-season to correct and looked polished in training camp and the preseason did not come back to the Eagles' second-year quarterback. Pederson would later say that Wentz's foot "slipped." His foot does slip a little. But not enough, from my vantage point, and then watching it on tape, to justify such an underthrown pass.
Wentz simply did not drive the football where it needed to be. Even though he established the team's all-time rookie record with 379 completions in 2016, routinely hitting the deep ball was something that plagued him, especially as the year wore on. There were questions about whether he had developed elbow soreness, which was never established. He did clearly seem tired. And why not? Wentz had thrown 607 passes in his rookie year, the second-most attempts of any rookie quarterback in league history. Only Andrew Luck threw more in his rookie year (627 in 2012). And look what happened to Luck: He was beaten and battered and wound up with his shoulder shredded, needing surgery that kept him out of football in 2017.
In the off-season, to adjust his mechanics, Wentz worked out with Adam Dedeaux, the quarterback whisperer and Motion Mechanics Instructor at 3DQB on the West Coast. From what I saw in spring practices, the fine-tuning worked. The ball came out more quickly and he seemed to be opening up his front foot so that he could push off with more power and authority with the back foot. "I like what I see," Pederson told me at the time. "He's driving the deep ball better."
Dick Vermeil, the former Eagles head coach who took the team to its first Super Bowl appearance in 1980 and watched Wentz all summer, told me this: "Carson Wentz has the potential to be one of the truly great ones. I mean truly great. Number one area of improvement I want to see this year is his accuracy downfield. And he needs receivers who make all the catches, even the tough ones."
Well, Roseman provided two of those: Smith and Alshon Jeffery, a veteran free agent from Chicago. But if the pass was going to be that inaccurate, there was no way the receivers could make up the difference.
After the ball got away from him against Washington, Wentz was visibly upset and Pederson could sense it immediately. On the very next play, the Redskins beat the Eagles' offensive line and Wentz took a nasty hit and sack.
Pederson told me he had a decision to make: Call a running play on third-and-12 and hope for the best, then punt. Or, stay aggressive. He chose option two. Wentz slid into the shotgun. He eluded the rush — this is what would be both his signature move and drive everybody crazy. On this play, he bought just the right amount of time and threw a laser at wide receiver Nelson Agholor, who had been plagued by drops in 2016, when the Eagles led the league with 31 dropped passes. Agholor snagged the pass and pirouetted and found his way to the end zone. In all, 58 yards and a touchdown. Eagles 7, Redskins 0.
Start fast, play with passion, respond to adversity — all three boxes checked. In one play. On the first offensive possession of the first quarter of the first game.
And it was sweet redemption for Agholor, whose heart and commitment to the game had been severely criticized and questioned in 2016, leading Pederson to wonder whether Agholor was worth saving. But new wide receivers coach Mike Groh, the son of legendary Bill Parcells acolyte Al Groh, worked him hard over the summer and built his confidence.
After the game, Pederson would tell me: "You've got to take these shots. If you're struggling offensively or you're just not moving the ball and the defense sees that and they start crowding the box with eight or nine guys, then you're sunk. You got to take shots to loosen everybody up, the defense and your own team. Give them a scare. Give us some confidence that no matter what happens, we're going to play football."
* * *
And a lot did happen in this game. But the Eagles kept playing football.
I was on the sideline, wearing ESPN radio headphones, standing about 15 yards from Pederson when Ronald Darby — right in front of the Eagles' bench — crumpled to the turf. Initially, my view of the play and the player was blocked. But I could hear Darby's agony and I could see the stunned faces of his teammates. Darby's right ankle was a twisted mess.
Safety Malcolm Jenkins, the leader of the defense, kneeled. On the sideline, there was shock and disgust — the look that said, "Is this how this season is going to go?"
Darby was making his first start in an Eagles uniform. And he looked fluid and quick — just what Roseman wanted when he traded with his old nemesis, Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott, to obtain Darby, shipping wide receiver Jordan Matthews to the Bills in a risky swap. Matthews was Wentz's best friend on the team. On the day of the trade, just before the season started, Wentz and several other teammates — tight end Zach Ertz, safety Chris Maragos, and linebacker Jordan Hicks — drove Matthews to Philadelphia International Airport to say good-bye. There were no tears, just a lot of prayers. The four of them attend services and Bible study in the same church in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, where the motto is "God's vision for each of us is unique" — a sentiment that would help Matthews cope with leaving the team that drafted him and his closest friends in the world.
So, there was tremendous pressure on Darby. Good thing he had talent. Bad luck that he got hurt in a non-contact injury. Later, it would become official: Darby out for months.
But even before that realization, just moments after Darby was carted off the field, I could see one player urging his teammates on the sideline to rally to the cause, to close the deal, to get a road win at FedEx Field. It was veteran defensive end Chris Long, also in his first year with the team — the son of Hall of Fame pass rusher Howie Long who had won a Super Bowl title in 2016 with the New England Patriots. Long and Patriots teammate LeGarrette Blount were brought in as Sunday mercenaries by Roseman to teach the Patriot Way — do your job, find a way to win. No matter what the cost, no matter what the adversity.
"We got a game to play, let's go," said Long, running onto the field. "Let's go make a play."
* * *
And, foreshadowing what would happen five months later in Minneapolis, that's exactly what defensive end Brandon Graham did.
With just one minute and 38 seconds left in the game, the Eagles led by less than a touchdown, 22–17. Redskins quarterback Kirk Cousins had just hit tight end Jordan Reed for a seven-yard gain. It was second-and-three and Cousins again dropped back to pass. He'd already been sacked three times in the game. Here came another one. Graham bull-rushed the pocket and swiped at the football — a strip sack. The football landed gently in the lap of defensive tackle Fletcher Cox, who looked like Baloo in The Jungle Book as he danced happily to the end zone for a touchdown. There was a referee review. The play was upheld and the Eagles erupted in joy, culminating in a Gatorade bath for Pederson.
Mission accomplished: Road win in the division. And they had found something that would become imperative to building a championship team: A fourth-quarter pass rush. Defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz, the diabolic genius who doesn't mind you thinking he's a genius, had devised the perfect storm at exactly the right time with the right set of chess pieces.
Graham had two sacks, two tackles for a loss against the run, and forced an offensive holding call.
"That goes below the radar," Schwartz said. "You force a quarterback into intentional grounding. You force an offensive lineman into a hold. Good players can do those kinds of things. And Brandon is a good player."
Who sealed an important win.
But the cost was high. Darby gone. Future Hall of Fame left tackle Jason Peters, who left the game early complaining of a groin injury, had an uncertain season ahead. And kicker Caleb Sturgis was done with some kind of mysterious hip injury.
Nothing worse than having to look for a new kicker before you have to take on your old boss. Next up, Doug Pederson's mentor and confidante, Andy Reid, the Eagles' old head coach. On his turf.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Philly Special"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Sal Paolantonio.
Excerpted by permission of Triumph Books LLC.
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Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Prologue v
Part I Welcome To Wentzylvania
Chapter 1 The Wentz Wagon Hits the Road 3
Chapter 2 Exposing Big Red 15
Chapter 3 Malcolm in the Middle 27
Chapter 4 The Wentz Wagon in La-La Land 41
Chapter 5 Carson's Team 55
Part II The Making Of An MVP
Chapter 6 Believing in Big V 73
Chapter 7 Next Man Up 85
Chapter 8 Catching the Jay Train 99
Chapter 9 Lurie's Lament 111
Part III The Fate Of The Season
Chapter 10 Desperate in Dallas 127
Chapter 11 Survive and Advance 141
Chapter 12 Sloppy in Seattle 153
Chapter 13 "We All We Got, We All We Need" 165
Part IV The Soul Of The City
Chapter 14 From Wentz We Came, In Foles We Trust 187
Chapter 15 Hoping St. Nick Would Soon Be There 201
Chapter 16 "Just Go Be Nick" 213
Chapter 17 The City of Brotherly Shove 225
Chapter 18 The Team from the Land of 10,000 Lakes Visits the City with 10,000 Losses 241
Part V "Nobody Likes Us and We Don't Care"
Chapter 19 "We Got This" 255
Chapter 20 In the Nick of Time 269
Chapter 21 Philly Special 281
Chapter 22 The Road to Victory Goes Through Tom Brady 293
Epilogue 307
Afterword: Almost Special Again 313
Acknowledgments 317