Long before I became a lawyer, an Iraq War veteran, a member of Congress, and served in the Obama administration, I had a very different job — one that came with a yellow neon jacket, a heavy flashlight, and a front-row view of the most raucous, chaotic section in all of Philadelphia sports.
I was a 125-pound security guard at the old Veterans Stadium, stationed in the notoriously rowdy 700 section, affectionately called “the zoo.” We even had our own courtroom in the basement. I often joke that my job there was tougher than I was a 165-pound Army paratrooper in the invasion of Iraq.
That’s Philly for you.
We do grit. We do hard knocks. We do “prove them wrong.”
And right now, as training camp heats up, that’s exactly what the defending Super Bowl Champion Philadelphia Eagles are doing — keeping the main thing the main thing.
You can feel it already: This team isn’t coasting. They’re charging.
As my Wharton colleague Angela Duckworth puts it in her book Grit (which she wrote while researching at West Point), success doesn’t come from being the smartest or the most gifted. It comes from showing up. Over and over again. Especially when no one’s watching. It comes from passion and perseverance over the long haul.
That’s grit — and this Eagles team has it in spades.
The Jalen Hurts philosophy
Grit comes from showing up every damn day like it still matters. Even after you’ve been victorious.
That’s Jalen Hurts, the Eagles’ star quarterback. Hurts is the living, breathing embodiment of Duckworth’s research. Calm. Focused. Unshakeable.
NFL analysts still don’t rank Jalen Hurts in the top 10 — even though he and the Eagles just outplayed Patrick Mahomes in the Super Bowl, the league’s most decorated active quarterback. Jalen Hurts is the epitome of an underdog: benched in college, drafted as a backup, but since Day 1, he’s been all grit, and he refuses to let success soften him. When he showed up at the Super Bowl ring ceremony this year, he left his Super Bowl ring in the box, refusing to put it on. Reporters asked why.
“I moved on,” he said.
He knows it’s always harder to be the hunted than the hunter. Nobody cheers for Goliath. That’s just the price of winning it all — what we call in the Army, “The burden of leadership.” You go from underdog to target overnight. But leave it to Hurts to remind us that a ring isn’t just a crown jewel. It’s a challenge to continue being better.
Love him or not, one thing is clear: Jalen Hurts isn’t playing for clout. He’s playing for legacy.
And it’s not just him. Training camp is in full swing. The offense is dialed in. Saquon’s extended, the O-line is still the best in the league, and Hurts is locked in with A.J. and Smitty like they never left. But let’s be clear, they had to pay what’s known as the “Super Bowl tax,” where they’ve lost six starting players, five on defense and one on offense.
The reality is that when you win the Super Bowl, other teams want your players, and your players want warm weather or massive generational wealth-type contracts. That’s just the business. And it’s not just in the players draft where Philadelphia reaps the rewards of an Eagles victory.
This team’s greatness isn’t just measured by rings. It’s measured in resilience. By what they do now that the confetti’s been swept up and everyone’s watching.
That’s the lesson Duckworth’s research at Wharton drives home — what separates the great from the good isn’t raw talent. It’s what happens after the win. When the lights go down. When you start over. As All-Pro left tackle Jordan Mailata puts it, the Eagles approach each season with a “blank canvas mentality.” In his words: “We’re not defending anything.”
In Philly, that’s not just football. That’s life.
The Eagles are more than a franchise. They’re a living, breathing piece of the city’s soul more than any of the other sports teams we have here (sorry, Phillies, baseball might be America’s pastime, but football is our passion).
Super Bowl hangovers are real
After the Eagles won their first Super Bowl ever in 2017, they stumbled into the next season with a 2–3 start. While they turned around the season and even won a playoff game, you could tell that injuries and the burden of being the hunted team to beat was just too much.
Taxpayers win too
When the Eagles won the Super Bowl last year, the impact on Philadelphia’s economy was immediate. Hotels alone brought in $4.3 million in extra revenue during the three-day stretch of the victory parade — not even counting the three home playoff games.
Over 1 million people descended on Philadelphia for the victory parade — buying food, drinks, Eagles merch, hotel rooms, and transit fares. For the 2023 season, the Eagles generated over $650 million in revenue. With the Eagles’ clean sweep in the 2024 season, you can imagine how that success played out in Philadelphia, especially when winning franchises can generate upwards of $90 million more in a successful season.
With a current valuation of over $8.3 billion, the Eagles isn’t just a brand. It’s an economic powerhouse. And this doesn’t even count for the innumerable bars, clothing outlets, and, ahem, bootleg merchandise with Eagles themes scattered throughout Pennsylvania. When the Eagles win, every Pennsylvanian does, too.
But in Philly, football is more than business. The franchise drives the city’s economy, its morale, and its identity. Fall camp is open. The Birds are back. And the canvas, as Hurts put it, is blank. Now it’s time to paint.
The city bleeds green
This team doesn’t just belong to an owner. It belongs to the city.
You can feel it in the skyline. In the SEPTA trains. In the corner bars and the family cookouts. When the Birds fly, the city soars. And when they fall, the city bleeds green. As my other Wharton colleague Adam Grant writes in his book Hidden Potential, the best teams have the best team players. He describes that when you face a daunting task, you need confidence and competence, but he also says that it’s easier to carry a torch for people who matter to us: It helps us overcome obstacles when others count on us because we find strength we didn’t know we had.
Who are you carrying a torch for? For me, it’s my family, my faith, and my veteran brothers and sisters. I hope you, too, can find that grit to overcome life’s challenges. Your torch or your purpose is like your superpower or life force; it can help you overcome even the toughest odds.
In the meantime: Go Birds!!!
The Honorable Patrick J. Murphy is a Wharton lecturer, Vetrepreneur, and the 32nd Army Under Secretary after earning the Bronze Star for service in Baghdad, Iraq as an All-American with the 82nd Airborne Division — @PatrickMurphyPA on Instagram and Twitter.
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