Philadelphia Eagles – Last Team Standing

(Image Credit Associated Press/Philadelphia Eagles)

We hold onto our cherished memories as long as we can. However, as time relentlessly marches on the once razor-sharp details of favored recollections inevitably begin to dull around the edges a bit…and may even start to fade.

I (currently) believe the year I became a full-fledged Philadelphia Eagles fan was 1967. I was nine. My family had access to season tickets – seats located on the very top row of venerable Franklin Field. When I was monitored and allowed to do so, I remember standing up on those worn, wooden bleachers, stretched my arms across the significantly sturdier brick wall surrounding the stadium…and re-focused my wide-eyed attention on the vast Philadelphia skyline.

During halftimes – but also when all hope for my Eagles winning those days had flown away – I recall the times I was on those bleachers looking out across the city’s horizon.

I unfortunately saw a great deal of the Philly skyline during second halves of Eagles games back then.

The Philadelphia Eagles won the NFL Championship back in 1960 but being two years’ old, I admittedly wasn’t cognizant of that accomplishment. But I fully comprehend the one this franchise achieved on February 4^th, 2018 in Minneapolis, MN.

I remember the last time I wrote about the Eagles here was early December, 2016. My recollections of that particular occasion are almost as vivid as newer memories created this past Super Bowl Sunday. After a brutal, ugly 32-14 loss on a cold, dank, dark day in Cincinnati it was my considered opinion they had hit rock bottom yet again…a level my Eagles found themselves residing at for many years as I was growing up.

There certainly have been some very good, very solid Eagles teams along the way. There also have been a handful of years since 1960 where we fans could seriously expect the season in question might be the one where the franchise could achieve pro football supremacy once more.

But the 2017 season wasn’t one of them.

No way.

There simply aren’t enough WordPress servers to house all the data I could provide as to why the Eagles winning the Super Bowl is the most incredible, improbable, illogical, implausible and inconceivable professional sporting achievement the Philadelphia region has likely ever witnessed.

The positively gruesome way their 2016 season ended both on and off the field. All of the season-ending injuries to stars suffered this year…even before league MVP-candidate quarterback Carson Wentz’s year also prematurely ended in Week 13.

Most assuredly there was legitimate reason this year’s edition of the Philadelphia Eagles were calculated to be underdogs in each contest of their postseason.

They were.

Yet, here we are.

As the crush of confetti flew once Philadelphia’s sensational Super Bowl victory was finally secured I recalled – gratefully still with much clarity – those first, formative, frustrating fan years standing on those bleachers.

The Philadelphia Eagles.

Last Team Standing.

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