Philadelphia’s Football Revolution: How a Cultural Shift Explains the Eagles’ Rise

Timmy Jernigan had been a member of the Eagles for about two hours when an unknown number lit up his phone. Not recognizing the area code, the defensive tackle ignored the call. Seconds later, his cell buzzed with a text message: Yo, it’s Cox. “This man, I don’t know how he got my number so fast,” Jernigan says now.

In early April, Philadelphia traded the 74th overall pick in the 2017 draft to the Ravens in exchange for Jernigan and the 99th pick. A former college star and second-round selection, Jernigan had enjoyed his share of NFL success, but at the time his status in the league paled in comparison to that of Fletcher Cox. In June 2016, the Eagles handed Cox a six-year extension with a whopping $63 million in guarantees—then the most in NFL history for a non-quarterback. That a player with that type of stature, both around the league and within the Eagles locker room, would welcome him with open arms told Jernigan all he needed to know about his new organization. “When that happened, I knew this was the place to be,” Jernigan says. “A lot of times, when you’ve got two good players that play the same position, there’s a little bit of tension there.”

Any potential for a rivalry was extinguished before Jernigan even boarded a plane for Philadelphia. In its place was an outstretched hand and a message about what type of crew Jernigan was set to join. “I wanted to tell him what type of room he’d be dealing with,” Cox says. “It’s a group of great guys, and not just great guys, but guys who show up to work hard every day.”

Jernigan is one of several starters who came to this Eagles team following the 2016 season. A month before landing Jernigan, Philly signed receivers Alshon Jeffery and Torrey Smith to short-term contracts. Slot cornerback Patrick Robinson and running back LeGarrette Blount both inked one-year deals in free agency, and in August executive vice president of football operations Howie Roseman traded a third-round pick and wide receiver Jordan Matthews to Buffalo to acquire Ronald Darby, the final piece of a revamped group of cornerbacks. In the hours before the October trade deadline, Roseman swung a deal for Dolphins running back Jay Ajayi for the low price of a fourth-round pick. Even key backups like defensive end Chris Long and quarterback Nick Foles arrived in Philadelphia last spring.

Those moves made for a significant amount of year-to-year turnover, but Philly’s new guys and its established veterans all say there was no prolonged adjustment period. Each new addition has a story similar to Jernigan’s—of receiving a gesture that made him feel both wanted and welcome. That culture of inclusion helped new faces acclimate immediately, and it’s defined the Eagles’ success this season. “If you a have a foundation and a core group of guys that have been here for a long time, leaders who know the team, know the organization, they understand what’s expected,” center Jason Kelce says. “When you add the new pieces in, it’s very easy for those guys to understand quickly what’s going on.”

The Eagles took flight this fall, soaring to an 8-1 record heading into their November bye week. In the span of one offseason, Philly had morphed from a solid-if-flawed 7-9 group into the most complete team in football. Even after starting quarterback Carson Wentz went down with a torn left ACL in December, the Eagles rode their loaded roster all the way to Super Bowl LII. And with the talent lining the depth chart and the ethos that’s permeated the locker room, this run may only be the beginning.

When Robinson was pondering his free-agent decision, he called Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins, who was his teammate in New Orleans earlier in their careers. Robinson wanted to know what’d await him in Philadelphia. “The biggest thing that I wanted him to know,” Jenkins says, “is that we were building something.”

The Eagles’ administrative offices are situated on the second floor of the NovaCare Complex in south Philadelphia. At the top of the stairs sits a waiting room full of seldom-used couches that functions more as a dividing line in the facility than an actual seating area. To the left of the room are the football offices, populated by a robust group of front-office personnel. On the other end of the building, down a long corridor, is the business side of the organization, from ticketing to marketing and everything in between.

In January 2015, the Eagles announced that then-third-year head coach Chip Kelly had been granted full control of the 53-man roster, including authority over the draft. That meant that Roseman, who’d been given the franchise’s general manager duties in 2010, was stripped of much of his power and jettisoned from the top spot in the front-office pecking order. According to a source who works for the Eagles, Roseman’s figurative banishment from the GM chair came with a literal exile to the business side of the facility. He was forced to set up shop in an empty corner conference room, left to wallow in football purgatory as Kelly ran the show.

The year that followed was an unmitigated disaster in NFL team building. Eleven days after trading longtime Eagles star LeSean McCoy to Buffalo for linebacker Kiko Alonso in March 2015, Kelly brought in running back DeMarco Murray on a five-year, $42 million contract. “It was obvious from the beginning that he didn’t want to be here,” one member of the 2015 Eagles says. At the time, Murray was coming off an 1,845-yard rushing campaign with the Cowboys; he went on to average a meager 3.6 yards per carry in Philadelphia, finishing with just 702 yards.

Kelly’s roster machinations didn’t end there. The Eagles allowed wide receiver Jeremy Maclin to bolt for Kansas City in free agency, electing instead to sign cornerback Byron Maxwell to a six-year, $63 million deal that quickly turned into an albatross. Kelly also sent quarterback Nick Foles, a 2015 fourth-round pick, and a 2016 second-round pick to the Rams for Sam Bradford, his $13 million salary, and a 2015 fifth-rounder. “Guys were getting shipped in and out of here,” tight end Zach Ertz says. “It was kind of a revolving door, the quarterback position in particular.” As longtime stalwarts were kicked to the curb and new faces continued to arrive, even Philly’s established players began to wonder who might go next. “If nobody knows who’s gonna be here, if nobody feels safe, if nobody has security, it’s hard to invest in each other,” Jenkins says.

After the 2015 Eagles lost nine of their first 15 games and nearly every one of those personnel choices went up in flames, Kelly was fired. Offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur took over as the interim head coach, and Roseman regained control of both the roster and his place in the franchise’s hierarchy. Over the next six months, Roseman systematically purged nearly every vestige of Kelly’s short tenure in charge. On March 9, 2016, Roseman dealt Murray and his onerous contract to the Titans to move up 13 picks (from no. 110 to no. 97) in the fourth round of that year’s draft. The next day, he shipped Maxwell and Alonso to Miami in a move that lifted Philadelphia from the 13th overall pick to the eighth in the first round. (That deal would become instrumental in the subsequent trade up to nab Wentz.)

Along with expunging many of Kelly’s moves, Roseman doubled down on a few of his own. In the span of four days in January 2016, Philly inked Ertz and right tackle Lane Johnson to massive extensions. A week later, defensive end Vinny Curry was given a five-year deal with $23 million in guarantees. In June, Cox secured his record- and bank-breaking $103 million extension.

In addition to ensuring that the Eagles’ core of young stars would remain intact for the foreseeable future, Roseman’s flurry of signings was designed to deliver a message to the locker room. The Dream Team fiasco of 2011—which included an offseason haul of expensive free agents like Nnamdi Asomugha, Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie, and Jason Babin—had taught this Eagles front office plenty of lessons about the right way to construct a roster. Eschewing draft picks in favor of collecting big-money outsiders can change the entire complexion of a locker room. “Whenever you’ve been with another organization, you can’t help it: You’ve seen the business side of football,” Kelce says. “So even if you’re not thinking about it, it’s almost an unconscious thing.”

Kelly had committed the same cardinal sins that the Eagles had made four years prior, giving his team a mercenary feel in the process. By locking up so many crucial contributors in short order, Roseman issued a declaration about how his version of the team would be built. “Once you start investing in a core group of guys … if you’re one of those guys, you say, ‘OK, they want me here, and I have ownership of what’s happening here,’” Jenkins says. “And if you’re not one of those guys, you see, ‘OK, if I invest time, and I play well, and I perform, this team notices that.’”

Before becoming a coach, Doug Pederson spent 12 seasons as a backup quarterback in the NFL. He was behind Brett Favre on Green Bay’s depth chart for two different stretches, from 1995 to 1998 and 2001 to 2004. He played under Andy Reid during the coach’s debut season in Philadelphia, and stood on the sideline for the Packers’ Super Bowl XXXI victory over the Patriots. Pederson came to Philly with a decade and a half of pro football memories, and that wealth of experience was the first trait that many of his new players noticed when the Eagles hired him in January 2016. “He’s been around Hall of Fame players,” Lane Johnson says. “The knowledge he has, the social intelligence, he just handles situations really well.”

“Social intelligence” isn’t far removed from the term that Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie used to describe the kind of head coach that he sought to replace Kelly. “You’ve got to open your heart to players and everybody you want to achieve peak performance,” Lurie told reporters during a press conference in January 2015. “I would call it a style of leadership that values information, all of the resources that are provided and at the same time, values emotional intelligence. I think in today’s world of the way [businesses] are run and sports teams are run, you need a combination of all those factors to create the best chance to succeed.”

Both remarks are not-so-thinly-veiled barbs toward Kelly, whose harsh style could often turn abrasive. Beyond infamously overhauling Philly’s diet, Kelly proved exceedingly difficult to reach. “He was kind of a more distant head coach,” Kelce says. “There were like middlemen that you were supposed to talk to before you were supposed to relay a message to the head coach. It was just a weird situation.”

Ertz is more blunt in his assessment. “The old locker room wasn’t a good locker room,” he says. “No other way to put it.”

One of Pederson’s first acts upon taking over as Eagles head coach was establishing a leadership council, manned by Wentz and a handful of veterans like Kelce, Jenkins, and 11th-year tight end Brent Celek. Every Tuesday morning, the group meets in Pederson’s office to address the locker room’s thoughts and concerns. Lines of communication that had been closed under Kelly were open from the start. “Even if nothing is accomplished by that—actually changing anything structurally or concretely—psychologically, it’s an empowering thing for a coach to say that, ‘We value what you have, we value your opinion on things,’” Kelce says. “That was huge.”

As players embraced the enhanced level of dialogue, they also noticed differences in the way Pederson doled out criticism and managed the egos in the room. Scoldings, while rare, happened in private. Toxicity disappeared from meetings and dissipated from the practice field. Soon, the Eagles sensed a familiar but forgotten feeling: Football had become fun again.

Philly’s first season with Pederson and Wentz was uneven, with the 2016 squad winning its first three games before dropping nine of its next 11. But everyone in the building recognized that the groundwork for something special had been laid. With a handful of choice additions, this roster had the makings of a legitimate title contender.

“We had the core group of guys,” Jenkins says. “We had a quarterback, we had our guys on defense. We just needed to address a few positions.”

The Eagles visited Chicago during Week 2 of the 2016 season, and for the first two quarters of that game, then-Bears receiver Jeffery paid little attention to Philly’s rookie quarterback. But after halftime he started to take notice, as Wentz went 21-of-34 passing while leading the Eagles to a 29-14 win. “[Carson] was making some plays with his feet and with his arm,” Jeffery says. “I was like, ‘This guy’s pretty good.’”

Pederson may be responsible for creating an environment in which players want to stay long term, but this offseason Wentz was the main selling point to bring top players to Philadelphia. “[Carson makes this] a place that guys want to be,” left guard Stefen Wisniewski says. “Not only guys on the team, but free agents, guys who have a choice.”

When the Eagles signed Jeffery to a one-year deal, added Smith, and eventually traded for Jernigan and Darby, the players in house saw the moves as one final, massive swing to create a Super Bowl–caliber roster. “I knew we were setting up something special,” running back Darren Sproles says. Unlike in years past, Philadelphia had used trades and free agency to improve on the margins, strengthening its thinnest position groups and using the market to complement an established core. “We did a job of not necessarily going after the sexiest plays out there, but quality guys that are talented, that know what it takes to win championships,” Jenkins says.

Any growing pains that arose rapidly vanished, a byproduct of how new guys were brought into the fold. For example, Jenkins remembers Darby throwing up on his first day in practice, as the Eagles’ sessions were more demanding than what he’d experienced in Buffalo. Jenkins offered the occasional reminders that he had to run to the ball on every play. “Not in a confrontational way,” Jenkins says. “We just have that standard. When a new guy comes in who might be frustrated, you say, ‘Hey, we know you’re frustrated. I understand it. But we’re going to keep it together. Your time’s gonna come.’ You put out the fires before they become huge infernos.”

Likewise, Jeffery struggled to connect with Wentz early in the season. Ertz says that without fail, the wideout maintained the mentality that his production didn’t matter so long as the Eagles were winning. “A lot of the times on a team’s defense, the guys are naturally closer because it’s all about the defensive side of the ball, everyone’s gotta be doing their thing,” Ertz says. “Whereas offense, on teams I’ve been a part of in the past, it’s kind of, as long as I get my catches or my yards or whatnot. But with this team it’s the complete opposite.”

Jenkins picked up on a similar attitude in Ajayi upon his arrival in Philadelphia. Rumors swirling before the October trade suggested that Ajayi was a malcontent trying to strong-arm his way out of Miami. Yet Eagles players say they found someone with a totally different vibe. “That’s all you read about, and then he gets here, and he’s a team guy, a good locker-room guy,” Jenkins says. “All he wants to do is go to work.”

Throughout these playoffs, each new Philly addition has made his presence felt. Ajayi emerged as a tackle-breaking machine during the Eagles’ 15-10 divisional-round win over Atlanta, racking up 98 yards from scrimmage on 18 touches. Smith and Jeffery both hauled in touchdown passes in a 38-7 rout of Minnesota during the NFC championship. Long’s pressure on Vikings quarterback Case Keenum led to a first-quarter interception by Robinson, who reversed field and took the pick 50 yards the other way for a game-changing score.

As the Eagles basked in the glow of the victory that sent them to the Super Bowl, Jenkins couldn’t help but think of the conversation he’d had with Robinson last spring. What was once a recruiting pitch had turned into a 13-3 regular season and an NFC crown, and he marveled at how it’d all come together. “I know it was important for Patrick to get around a team that was a tight-knit group, that cared about playing with one another,” Jenkins says. “It had nothing to do with X’s and O’s or the actual city. It was just about being in a good locker room. I’ve been in a good locker room that’s been special, and this is another one.”

By coming to Philadelphia on a one-year deal, Jeffery theoretically had the chance to cash in as a free agent this spring. Despite playing through early struggles and posting two no-show performances after Foles took over for the injured Wentz, the 27-year-old receiver finished with 789 yards and nine touchdowns. The market for him in March would’ve been ravenous. Yet instead of becoming a free agent, Jeffery inked a four-year extension worth $52 million during the first week in December. That decision came about a month after Jernigan, playing in the final year of his rookie deal, signed his own four-year extension for $48 million. “I was happy here, man,” Jernigan says. “The way Howie just invited me into this organization and to be a part of the family, it was just like, ‘Why would I go?’”

Roseman and Pederson have created a culture with its own gravitational pull. Players with the chance to look elsewhere don’t bother. “I can go around this entire facility and not say, ‘I don’t like something about this person,’ or ‘I don’t agree with how this person does this,’” Jernigan says. “Everybody here is just family.”

Moments before throwing on a 2014 BCS championship game hoodie, Jernigan notes that the climate in Philadelphia reminds him of his final collegiate season at Florida State, when the Seminoles won the national title with a stacked roster of future pros. “It feels identical,” Jernigan says. “From a family standpoint, and the level of talent we have on the team. Not just the top 11 players. I’m talking the top 20 players on each side of the ball. I don’t think there’s a team in this league put together quite like ours. Howie’s done an amazing job.”

Unlike college, eligibility isn’t a concern in the NFL. Philadelphia’s competitive shelf life can extend as long as its core is under contract. On Sunday, the Eagles will take on Tom Brady and the Patriots’ dynasty armed with the league’s most dangerous roster. And the way Jernigan sees it, this won’t be the last time they’re on the sport’s biggest stage. “I promise you, this year is not the only year that we have like this,” Jernigan says. “I see this coming year after year for a long time.”