Malcolm Jenkins describes the moment when the Eagles knew they were going to win the Super Bowl

Do you ever get tired of hearing about how the Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl? If so, I don’t know why you’re spending time at this site. If not, then you’ll probably enjoy this story Malcolm Jenkins shared last month at a Thuzio event.

LEFKOE: That moment, though, you come out onto that stage, take me into that moment.

JENKINS: So a lot went into that.

Maybe three or four days before the game, Doug Pederson comes up to a group of kind of, like, the leaders of the team. He’s like, ‘Hey, we gotta figure out what song we wanna come out to.’

So immediately we say: Dreams and Nightmares.

He’s like ‘Alright, what’s the backup just in case the league doesn’t [laughs] approve that?

And we were like ‘Uh … there is no backup. Make it happen.’

And so a couple days later he was like ‘Hey, you guys got what you want.’

So I still didn’t know what that was going to be. And it wasn’t until literally we came out [of the tunnel] and we heard it drop that we were like ‘We’re at the Super Bowl coming out to Meek Mill’s Dreams and Nightmares. We are gonna win this game!’

Just because, it started … we always listen to Meek. He represents Philly and kind of the grit, all the kind of things we had been doing around the team with social justice and prison reform. It was just perfect. It really started, the way it became a rallying cry, we played music like five minutes before all of our meetings. If you ever walk into a meeting early, there’s like music blasting and they usually have just a random playlist going.

And two weeks before the Super Bowl, or it might have been starting in the playoffs, our special teams coach, Coach [Dave] Fipp, just one day put it on. He was at least like three minutes of his whole meeting because the whole group had just gone crazy in the special teams meeting. So we just kept doing it over and over until it became kind of like our thing.

So when we got it in the Super Bowl, in the biggest stage ever, and then we heard what the Patriots came out to, it was like, ‘Oh yeah, we’re going to win this.’ Cause they’re about to fall asleep, yeah, at this point.

There’s no denying that the Eagles’ entrance featuring Dreams and Nightmares was a lot more exciting than the Patriots coming out to Crazy Train. You can re-watch both entrances again below.

A few things other things to unpack from Jenkins’ answer: I love how Pederson went to bat for his players to use a song with explicit lyrics. #EmotionalIntelligence. And I love how Fipp had a role in the song becoming the team’s anthem! That’s so funny and unexpected.

Jenkins was also asked about the final play of the Super Bowl when the Patriots attempted a Hail Mary.

LEFKOE: What was it like for you?

JENKINS: Times a thousand is what that was. I don’t mean to be cynical, I promise I’ll end on a light note. So before that play, we were at, for that situation, probably in the wrong defense. So, the defense that we called, was built so that if they were to try to take the ball out of bounds just one more time and get a little bit closer. But as they lined up, I realized, ‘Nah, they’re going to the end zone right here.’ So I’m telling guys, ‘OK, as soon as they release, everyone snatch their guy.’ We’ve been through this situation a thousand times in practice. End of the game, you’re supposed to box your guy out, there’s only two guys that are going to jump, everybody else, we don’t care about pass interference, just box your guy out. I’m looking at everybody, everybody’s confirming, we know what this is, we’re going to do it.

LEFKOE: They’re all jumping.

JENKINS: And immediately, I box my guy out like I’m supposed to, and everybody is jumping!

LEFKOE: It’s natural! I would jump too.

JENKINS: But they’re jumping against Gronk! Like, Gronk is clearly the biggest one. If we were going to box anybody out, it would be Gronkowski. But no, he’s running free down the field. So I’m immediately nervous. I see that he doesn’t catch it, and I’m like, ‘OK, we’re about to win.’ And out of nowhere Patrick Robinson bats it just back up for a split second. And my heart dropped.

But once it hit the ground, I think everybody just, there was so much weight lifted that we had been carrying as players just in our own season and things we had to go through. The injuries, the whole social justice thing, our players and what we’ve been doing, the fact that our city hadn’t won a Super Bowl ever. Just the hopes and dreams of our entire fan base. All of that just fell off of our backs in that moment. I think it took, probably, a good four or five seconds to realize it. We had to look at the refs to make sure they said incomplete. Had to look at the clock to make sure it was at zero.

The confetti finally hit me in the face and it’s like ‘We did this!’

I have to admit, Robinson tipping that pass is a little scary when you watch a replay. We’d be used to the old Eagles giving up a touchdown in that situation. But these aren’t the old Eagles anymore. The ball hit the ground instead. And now these are the Super Bowl champion Eagles.