PHILADELPHIA -- Jeffrey Lurie stood in the middle of the locker room early Sunday evening as smoke from victory cigars billowed through the air. Given the opportunity to make a bold declaration about his football team, the Eagles owner did not shy away from it.
Asked if he thought this was the best team in franchise history, he answered in the affirmative.
“I do,” he told NJ Advance Media. “I said that in September. I loved the 2017 (Super Bowl) team and what they did and we still have that step left to take with this team. But this is a very special group of people -- coaches, players, front office, everybody. It takes everybody. You have one weakness, you’re not going to go this far.”
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The Eagles, after a dominating 31-7 win over the San Francisco 49ers in the oddest of NFC Championship Games, are one win away from going as far as you can possibly go and if winning starts at the top, then Lurie is the biggest reason why this franchise has earned a perch among the NFL’s elite in the 21st century.
Dare we say it, the Eagles are the gold standard.
Lurie, of course, once said that before the Eagles had even reached the Super Bowl during his time as owner and he was ridiculed for it over and over again as the NFC Championship losses stacked one after another while the team he grew up rooting for -- the New England Patriots -- piled up Super Bowl victories.
But let the record show that the Eagles were mostly irrelevant during the Super Bowl era before Lurie became the owner.
Under owners Leonard Tose and Norman Braman from 1969 through 1994, the Eagles went to the playoffs eight times and had four postseason victories in 26 years. In 28 years with Lurie as the owner, the Eagles have gone to the playoffs 17 times and now are headed to their third Super Bowl, including their second in five years.
Lurie has hired five coaches since taking over ownership in 1994 and all five have taken the team to the playoffs. The first, Ray Rhodes, was just the third Black head coach in modern NFL history.
The second, Andy Reid, took the Eagles to five NFC Championship games and a Super Bowl before moving on to Kansas City, where he has cemented a Hall of Fame resume and now, after winning the AFC Championship Game Sunday against the Cincinnati Bengals, he will have a chance to beat Lurie for his second title.
That’s the outcome Lurie insisted he wanted before the AFC title game even started.
“Love it,” Lurie said when asked about playing against Reid. “I’m very close to Andy. He’s a Hall of Fame coach and it will be formidable because there’s nobody that’s better at devising a game plan with a bye. I love Andy. If it wasn’t for us, I’d always be rooting for him. But not in two weeks if we’re playing him. But I’m going to root for him (against the Bengals). I love him so much that I want him to get there. I just don’t want to lose to him.”
Nick Sirianni, at the age of 41, has become the youngest coach to lead the Eagles to the Super Bowl in just his second season and his boss is not the least bit surprised.
“No, not at all,” Lurie said. “I thought we had a great chance to get the No. 1 seed in September. That was our goal. Now we parlayed that into a trip to the Super Bowl and we have a chance to do what we are really here to accomplish.”
So much of what Lurie has done during his time as Eagles owner has been met with resistance from the fan base.
Reid wasn’t a popular choice as head coach. He was only 40 years old and he had never been an offensive coordinator. No one can argue all these years later that he wasn’t the right choice and the best coach in franchise history.
Chip Kelly might have been the wrong choice, but at least Lurie hired him for the right reasons. He loved the innovative hurry-up style he brought from college. Eventually, Lurie learned to loathe the way Kelly treated people and felt it created a toxic culture throughout the building.
The owner described Kelly as lacking “emotional intelligence.”
The public laughed.
Lurie hired Doug Pederson and everybody accused him of bringing in Andy Lite.
Two years later, Pederson took the Eagles to their first Super Bowl title before Reid won his first championship in Kansas City.
“Nobody wanted Andy,” Lurie said. “Nobody wanted Doug. Nobody knew about Nick, I guess. It didn’t make sense to me. It didn’t make sense to (general manager) Howie (Roseman). Just do the right thing and you have a chance to be great.”
It wasn’t a popular decision when the Eagles fired Pederson and hired Sirianni, who was hardly a hot NFL coaching candidate at the time. But Lurie and Roseman thought Sirianni brought something the Eagles needed. The owner calls it “a special sauce.”
From the offseason, through the regular season, Lurie and Roseman acted like this Eagles team had a chance to be great and gave Sirianni and his coaching staff the resources to make it so.
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They needed another receiver and Roseman acquired A.J. Brown from the Tennessee Titans.
They needed another edge rusher and depth in the interior defensive line after injuries to Derek Barnett and Jordan Davis and Roseman signed veterans Ndamukong Suh, Linval Joseph and Robert Quinn.
Former Giants cornerback James Bradberry was among the Eagles’ valuable off-season additions, too. And when he was told after Sunday’s win that his owner thought this was the best team in Eagles’ history, Bradberry paused for a second as he realized the enormity of that statement.
“That,” he said, “means we have to go out there and win the Super Bowl. That’s what it means to me. You’ve got to finish it.”
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Bob Brookover can be reached at rbrookover@njadvancemedia.com.
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