Eagles Christmas giveaway: Win a holiday prize package

The Philadelphia Eagles delivered an early Christmas present on Sunday by refusing to let the New York Giants end their playoff hopes.

In celebration of hope renewed (at least for a week), I’ve got two more gifts for Eagles Nation in advance of the holiday season.

My book on the Eagles’ Super Bowl season (with a foreword by Brandon Lee Gowton) is on sale until Christmas, and I’ll be giving away a pair of prizes while promoting it. Who doesn’t love free stuff, after all? Better yet: Who doesn’t love free Eagles stuff (again, at least for a week)?

Here are the details:

The giveaways

1.) Classic green Eagles hat and “Fly Eagles Fly” decal
2.) Brand-new 2018 Eagles New Era Sideline 9FIFTY Snapback

How to enter

a.) retweet the contest post on Twitter (below)
b.) comment on this post with your favorite Eagles-related gift of all time

Note: Feel free to tell the story behind your favorite gift, too! We’d probably all get a kick out of discussing that time you got your first playoff tickets or that beloved Nnamdi Asomugha jersey.

Winners

Two (2) winners — one for each giveaway — will be randomly selected on Tuesday, Dec. 4. Prizes will be mailed free of charge that week, so they should arrive before Christmas.

Buy the book

Whether or not you enter the contest, you’re more than welcome to get the book, too!

Published just weeks after the Super Bowl, it includes 180+ pages on the 2017 season, with profiles of every player on the championship team, recaps of all 19 games, onsite reporting from Super Bowl Week in Minneapolis and inside interviews about everything the Eagles accomplished on and off the field during their title run.

You can get a copy of “Hatched: The Unofficially Definitive Guide to the 2017 Super Bowl Champion Eagles” for just $6.99 on Lulu (click here) or at the regular price of $13.99 at Amazon (click here) and Barnes & Noble (click here).

And just in case you need a little slice of the pie before eating the whole thing, here’s an excerpt from “Hatched:”

Up until Jan. 29 inside the confines of St. Paul’s Xcel Energy Center, the Eagles had never been a part of a show quite like Super Bowl Opening Night. A prime-time, made-for-TV special enabling an unprecedented amount of credentialed media to mingle with and ask questions of the NFL’s top two teams six days before the big game, the scene was filled to the brim with theatrics. A stage standing above what usually serves as the home ice for the Twin Cities’ Minnesota Wild glistened with purple-haze lighting – a nod to the hometown Vikings fans in the house – and would soon produce both indoor fireworks and cinematic introduction music for the unveiling of the night’s dignitary teams. Fans gawked from above, seated around the stadium and overlooking the arena floor, where throngs of reporters, camera crews and celebrity guests prepped themselves for roughly three hours of interview time.

Some of the former Eagles players who graced the festivities weren’t too far removed from their own NFL careers when Philadelphia last appeared in the Super Bowl, but in January 2005, Opening Night was just an afternoon Media Day, a shade of itself before the dawn of the Internet era. In 2018, in large part due to efforts by the league to milk views from its insatiable year-round audience, it was an event – capital “E.”

For the defending Super Bowl champion New England Patriots, a powerhouse with mostly stoic figures, shrugging off the novelty of the night, either through “been there, done that” attitudes or an utter distaste for the silliness that often comes with thousands upon thousands of questions (some more serious than others), was like clockwork. Outside of some rare smiles from coach Bill Belichick or the mere sight of quarterback Tom Brady wearing a glove on each hand as he conducted his own podium session, there wasn’t much from New England’s end that screamed excitement. (And, in a sense, why would it when the team knew better than anyone that the true glory comes on Sunday, not the Monday before?)

But the Eagles were different. If there was one thing they didn’t have to worry about as they approached just their third Super Bowl in franchise history, in fact, it was soaking in the moment. For them, Opening Night may not have always carried an air of seriousness – even defensive end Brandon Graham spent part of his interview time showcasing the latest “underdog” mask to hit the Eagles’ locker room.

But that was exactly what so starkly differentiated them from the Patriots and defined Philadelphia’s big appearance under the Xcel lights, soon to be on the grandest stage of a season that so often had them written off: Looseness. Excitement. And a whole lot of having fun.

Safety Rodney McLeod, who took the Opening Night stage with a camera in hand, recording the media that were about to record him, was among dozens of Eagles who milled about the arena floor as the night crept just a few hours from midnight Eastern time. Like plenty of his teammates and unlike many of the Patriots who were required to do the same to start the night, his eyes rarely stopped scanning the room, absorbing the sights and, most of all, celebrating his team’s unlikely journey to Super Sunday.

“You never know when you’re going to be back on this stage again,” he said with a smile. “I’m taking it in with all of my brothers. It’s special because of our journey. Nobody thought we would be here.”

Plenty of McLeod’s teammates were taking it in, too. Jalen Mills embraced his flamboyant look – green hair, remember – by patrolling the scene with sunglasses, his inner movie star coming out to play. Patrick Robinson, another part of the championship secondary, couldn’t help but walk around carefully, grinning at the spectacle of it all. The “fallen soldiers” of the bunch – like Wentz and Jason Peters, who stood side by side when the Eagles first took the Opening Night stage – stood tall and welcomed applause. Foles, cast as a starting quarterback in the Super Bowl against all odds, outright downplayed the pressure of the moment, exuding tranquility.

At the time, the team’s comfort amid the glossy lead-up to Super Bowl LII, from Opening Night to consecutive days of interviews and hotel stays at the Mall of America, never guaranteed that the Eagles would also be ready for the real reason behind all the glitz of the week – the game itself. But just as Philadelphia’s personality mirrored its persistence during the season leading up to that point, the Birds’ early-week composure ultimately served as a forecast of what was to come.

And when the game finally arrived, unfolded and concluded, those exuberant and unflappable Eagles having discarded of the defending champs, there was an immediate, almost too-quick-to-fathom transition from appreciating their storybook presence at the big game to crowning them legends for winning it. Before long, Foles was in Disney World, a celebrated member of a championship float. Flocks of his teammates were ushered onto late-night TV. All of them were reunited for that once-unimaginable parade on Broad Street. And the world was left to grasp just how special this team truly was.

Any questions about the contest or book, feel free to fire away.