Back in February, with Super Bowl LVII only days away, Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie reclined in an oversize chair inside the offensive line meeting room of a conference rival. A knowing smile spread wide across his face, and his eyes danced at the possibilities on the horizons near and far.
Before after Philadelphia conducted one of its final practices at the headquarters of the Cardinals in Glendale, Ariz., Lurie attempted to explain how the Eagles arrived at that point in the franchise’s decorated history. It began with the philosophy he shared, developed, tweaked and followed with his general manager, Howie Roseman. And that philosophy started a choice that might sound simple—to take risks that make sense, regardless of perception—but rarely is easy. Most NFL franchises say they embrace this ethos. But only a handful of teams, such as the Eagles, truly do.
One question, in two separate interviews that stretched for more than an hour, momentarily stopped Lurie. He paused, leaned back, considered. “I’ve never been asked that,” he said after 10 seconds or so, buying time. Then he said, “The thing that would scare me the most is: . Doing the ‘traditional thing’ would scare me. Realizing we’ve morphed into that approach, whether in player personnel or picking coaches or offensive strategy. That’s a fear of mine. I’m always on the lookout for that. Are we getting too conservative in some way?”
The answer—in Lurie’s tenure, in recent seasons, for the overhaul, before the Super Bowl and after losing to the Chiefs—never changed. In terms of conservative leanings, the Eagles are the NFL equivalent of a nudist colony, which is to say they aren’t conservative at all.
When Lurie purchased the franchise in 1994, he paid Norman Braman a full $195 million. He understood two important things: This was a big-market team with all sorts of potential—and Braman was about as popular as the Giants with Philly football fans. Lurie resolved to take the approach he would, nearly three decades later, summarize in one word: .
As the rare sports owner with a stout IMDb page, not to mention three Academy Awards, Lurie set out to tell another story, that of a professional football franchise back on the rise. Sure, the Eagles had amassed all of four playoff appearances—never advancing beyond the divisional round—in the previous 12 seasons. He was there to change that and, by extension, the narrative. “How should you operate a sports franchise?” he asked that afternoon in Arizona. “That’s the story.”
The question now, after a large chunk of the NFL offseason—after the initial wave of free agency, the draft and doling out the richest contract by some measures in league history—is even more ambitious. Does this story end with a championship next February?
