PHILADELPHIA − Brandon Graham is holding a noon press conference Tuesday about his future, quite possibly announcing his retirement.
Graham would thus go down as the longest-tenured player in Eagles history, and a franchise icon.
Graham, a defensive end, played for 15 seasons, beating the all-time record of 14 seasons set by Chuck Bednarik. Graham played in the most games in team history at 206, and was third in sacks with 76.5.
Graham, who turns 37 on April 3, was also on two Super Bowl winning teams. His strip-sack on New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady in the final minutes of Super Bowl 52 is one of the most iconic moments in Eagles history.
None of it was supposed to happen.
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Graham was going to be cut after training camp in 2015. He knew it. Eagles coach Chip Kelly was going to keep an outside linebacker named Travis Long over Graham. But a few days before cutdown day, Long tore his ACL.
Graham survived. Then he thrived.
So perhaps it’s only fitting that Graham would retire in the same fashion: overcoming yet another obstacle. That’s because Graham’s season − and most likely his career − was supposed to have ended on Nov. 24, when he tore his triceps muscle late in a 37-20 win over the Rams.
The injury was supposed to take at least four months to heal. Graham made it back in 2 1/2 months in order to play in the Super Bowl last month.
So yes, the Eagles’ 40-22 win over the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX meant a lot to Graham, even though he wasn’t ready to admit that he had played his final game.
“I’m going to enjoy this,” he said. “If it is my last one, it’s a hell of a way to go out.”
That pretty much sums up Graham’s career.
He arrived as a 22-year-old out of Michigan as the Eagles’ first-round pick in 2010. The Eagles took him No. 13 overall, just ahead of safety Earl Thomas with the Seahawks and Jason Pierre-Paul with the Giants.
It didn’t take long before Graham started hearing the detractors criticizing the Eagles for not taking either Thomas or Pierre-Paul. That’s because Graham tore his ACL towards the end of his rookie season, then found himself buried on the bench in 2011 behind Jason Babin.
Then Graham futilely tried to play outside linebacker in Kelly’s 3-4 defensive system. Graham actually became a starter in 2015, Kelly’s final season, and had 6.5 sacks. He was a full-time starter after that, and kept getting better with age.
Graham had 9.5 sacks in 2017 when the Eagles went to the Super Bowl. He capped that season with his strip-sack on Brady. He had a career-high 11 sacks in 2022, at the age of 34, when the Eagles again went to the Super Bowl.
In the process, Graham continued to show his energy and exuberance, all the while becoming a prolific trash talker.
It was something former Eagles coach Andy Reid noticed about Graham when the Eagles drafted him in 2010.
“Oh boy,” Reid, now the Chiefs’ coach, said with a laugh at the Super Bowl. “He’s always going 100 miles an hour. From the time he was a little shooter coming out of the lake until now. He just goes and goes.”
Graham’s teammates noticed it as well. Graham quickly became a mentor to younger players, and a locker-room leader. Even after Graham tore his triceps, he was often in the locker room, working behind the scenes to not only rehab ahead of schedule, but to also guide Nolan Smith and Jalyx Hunt, young players who filled the void.
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You could never tell if Graham was upset about his season supposedly ending.
“Everybody in every workplace needs a Brandon Graham,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said the day after the injury. “His energy is contagious. If you’re having a bad day and get around him, he can turn your day positive. Obviously, the play speaks for itself, the play on the field.
“But just can’t say enough about him as a leader, as a captain, as a teammate.”
And oh, the trash talk.
There was the playoff game against the Giants in Jan. 2023, when Graham was out on the field for the coin toss, along with Saquon Barkley, who was playing for the Giants. Graham made sure to say something to all three Giants captains on the field − Barkley, quarterback Daniel Jones and defensive lineman Dexter Lawrence.
But for Barkley, Graham’s trash talking also showed something else.
“Oh, I’ve definitely dealt with the trash talking side of BG, just from playing against him for six years,” Barkley said with a laugh. “The biggest thing I would say about him is how much love he actually has for the Eagles organization and the city of Philadelphia.
“You can really see that. You can see it when he’s talking about it and he gets emotional.”
Defensive tackle Jordan Davis said he remembered a training camp practice against the Cleveland Browns in 2022, when Graham was trash-talking the Browns’ tackle he was facing.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Davis said, admitting that he was trying not to laugh as the quarterback was calling signals. “BG always says whatever comes to his mind. He’d just be joking and having fun with it, but a lot of people seem to take it seriously. You can’t do nothing but laugh at him.”
More seriously, Davis mentioned how much Graham has meant to him.
“Oh the gems that he drops,” Davis said. “My locker is right beside him, so everything he taught me about this league and how to go through not just situations, but life in general. Those experiences with him are invaluable.
“He’s old by league standards, but he’s actually still a young guy in life and is still growing himself … He’s a great guy through and through.”
Defensive tackle Milton Williams, who left last week as a free agent, knew the Super Bowl was Graham’s last game, even if Graham wasn’t ready to admit it yet.
“He just means everything to this team, and this city,” Williams said. “Without him, we probably wouldn’t have been able to get it done. Even though he got hurt, he was in here every day, coming to practice, always in guys’ ears, telling them to keep going.
“Just having him on the team has been everything for us. I’m happy for him to go out with a bang, and end his career the right way.”
Well, that might be the end of Graham’s playing career. But that’s not the end of Graham’s presence around the Eagles.
“I ain’t going nowhere,” he said. “I’m going to be a part of the organization somehow.”
Contact Martin Frank at mfrank@delawareonline.com. Follow on X @Mfranknfl. Read his coverage of the Eagles’ championship season in “Flying High,” a new hardcover coffee-table book from Delaware Online/The News Journal. Details at Fly.ChampsBook.com.
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