PHILADELPHIA – Players say they can sense the urgency. It’s in the weight room, in meetings, and on the practice field. It’s all over the training facility.
“They know what’s at stake,” said Brandon Graham. “They know that we get another chance at it, and we know that we don’t have a lot of people believing in us, so that’s even better. It’s on us. Our best is yet to come right now.”
Well, it better be, because there are no more tomorrow’s if the Philadelphia Eagles lose Monday night in Tampa against the Buccaneers to close out the Wild Card round.
Other teams who entered the playoffs as the No. 5 seed, which the Eagles are after tumbling from the mountaintop over the past six weeks, surely had urgency, too. It didn’t help.
Since 1990, just two teams have entered the playoffs as the No. 5 seed and gone on to win the Super Bowl — the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2020 and the New York Giants in 2007.
One of the game’s greatest quarterbacks, Tom Brady, was with the Bucs in 2020, beating Washington, Green Bay, and the Giants had Eli Manning and a ferocious defense led by Michael Strahan, Osi Umenyiora, and Antonio Pierce.
The Eagles don’t have Brady or Manning or even a defense that has been mostly toothless since Matt Patricia took over.
It’s a deck that looks stacked against Philly, to say the least.
Just seven teams won the Super Bowl after qualifying for the postseason as a wildcard.
In addition to the Bucs and Giants, the other five were:
1980 Oakland Raiders, No. 4 seed: 27-10 over the Eagles in Super Bowl 15
1997 Denver Broncos, No. 4 seed: 31-24 over the Packers in Super Bowl 32
2000 Baltimore Ravens, No. 4 seed: 34-7 over the Giants in Super Bowl 35
2005 Pittsburgh Steelers, No. 6 seed: 21-10 over the Seahawks in Super Bowl 40
2010 Green Bay Packers, No. 6 seed: 31-25 over the Steelers in Super Bowl 45
