Photos: Courtesy Philadelphia Eagles

There are several ways to play this out, this 15th and final Eagles season for defensive end Brandon Graham, and he’s considered them all. The best version is this vision: The Eagles win the Super Bowl and Graham steps up to the microphone at another Championship Parade and he lays it on the line.

“So what would I do?” he says, laughing at his locker at the NovaCare Complex, his home away from home since the Eagles made him the 13th overall selection in the 2010 NFL Draft. “Maybe I would step up and say, ‘Hey, now we have another question to ask me other than the one about sacking Tom Brady [in Super Bowl LII to help the Eagles beat the Patriots in 2018]! Or maybe I say to everyone, ‘I’m coming back for one more!’”

“I’d probably look around and see Howie Roseman and he’d be waving his hands saying, ‘We ain’t got no more money for you!!’ I would love that. It would be a great way to go out. I have dreams about it. I envision what that would be like. A dream come true. But I can’t complain one bit. This has all been a dream to me.”

Indeed it has. Graham has become one of the beloved Eagles of all time and, yes, his strip sack of Brady late in the Super Bowl in 2018 is one of the franchise’s iconic plays. Graham estimates, only half kidding, that he’s been asked about it “at least a million times. People want to know what it was like to taste Tom Brady’s blood. I’m like, ‘It was good. The best taste ever.’ It helped us win the Super Bowl and, man, it’s something I will never, ever forget.”

“That’s the thing, man. You don’t really have time to get in your feelings during the season. You have to stay level-headed, and just keep working and focus on what you are doing.”

Graham announced in the spring after signing a one-year contract with the Eagles – his fifth contract, by the way, which is incredible in a profession where the average career lasts less than three seasons – that the 2024 campaign would be his final one. An Eagles record – surpassing Hall of Famer Chuck Bednarik, who played for 14 seasons with the Eagles from 1949-62 – and one that was important to Graham, but not just to shake hands and kiss babies on his way toward the post-NFL life. He called it a “farewell tour,” but deep down Graham knew he still had some gas in the tank.

He knew he could still play the game at a high level. And he has done that. As Graham prepared to play the 200th game of his career with the Cleveland Browns in town in mid-October, Graham had been the team’s best defensive lineman through four games. 

Graham played so well that he joked (maybe?) with reporters about playing a 16th season, and then he finished with his ever-present smile and hearty laugh.

“Really, I’m staying in the moment, enjoying every bit of it,” he said.

In truth, Graham is deep-thinking the final season of a career that has been remarkable: He has played both defensive end and stand-up linebacker, has been named an All-Pro and a Pro Bowl player, has come back twice from injuries (microfracture surgery on knee in 2011 and torn Achilles tendon in 2021) and has, of course, won a Super Bowl. He’s been to the bottom, and he’s been to the top.

All of it is whirring through his mind in vignettes this season.

“I hope to be emotional about what’s happening one of these times, because I haven’t cried, I haven’t been emotional in a while,” Graham says. “I know nothing’s wrong with me. I’m happy about where I am, and I’m in tune with my feelings. Sometimes I think, ‘Am I masking my feelings?’ But in the end, I just take a deep breath. I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished and what I’m doing now. I’m just working hard and playing ball.”

“That’s the thing, man. You don’t really have time to get in your feelings during the season. You have to stay level-headed, and just keep working and focus on what you are doing.”

What the man is doing is what he’s always done: Graham is a daily dose of sunshine to everyone who has ever met him – a 1,000-megawatt smile, a warm greeting, a genuine welcome to all. His locker is a parlor of sorts for the guys, complete with dozens of samples of cologne – “The guys come here and get that fresh scent before they leave the locker room,” he says – plus bobblehead dolls and knick knacks Graham has collected through the seasons.

Brandon Graham with his wife Carlyne, daughter Emerson and son Bryson

He has played long enough to make sure his 8-year-old daughter Emerson remembers her father playing for the Eagles and maybe long enough that his son, Bryson, 5, will also have memories.

“Very important to me,” he says. “I wanted the babies to know what daddy did for a living.”

To end this the right way, Graham pushed himself during the offseason. Back in those first couple of seasons, Graham maybe tried to skip a day or two of maximizing his performance if he was out socially the night before, but as he learned more about how to have success and the subtleties of the game, and what separates the NFL players from the NFL stars, he learned not to cut corners.

In the months leading up to this 2024 season, Graham pushed pedal to metal.

“I wasn’t sure how much I would have the chance to play, so I had to push even more to show them they could trust me out there,” he says. “I had to show them I was ready, that I wasn’t here to just be on the team and then retire. And this is just beginning for me. I’m thinking of the end, thinking that I’m going to make that play that wins it for us and everybody is saying, ‘Damn, BG did it AGAIN! He ended the game!’”

“Man, that would be CRAZY.”  

Eagles Insider Dave Spadaro has covered every Eagles game since 1987 and is seen and heard throughout the year on television, radio and Eagles coverage everywhere. You can hear his Eagles Live Podcast on iTunes.