The Philadelphia Eagles are one win away from a Super Bowl appearance, and a franchise legend will be in attendance Sunday to bring the energy for their NFC Championship showdown against the San Francisco 49ers. This week, former Eagles safety Brian Dawkins will serve as Philly's honorary captain.
Dawkins played 13 seasons for the Eagles from 1996-2008, quickly becoming one of the most fierce ball-hawking, hard-hitting safeties in the NFL. In 183 career games played for the Eagles, he recorded 914 combined tackles and 34 interceptions, which is tied with Eric Allen and Bill Bradley for most interceptions in an Eagles uniform. Dawkins was a five-time All-Pro, a nine-time Pro Bowler and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2018. After football, Dawkins actually took a role with the Eagles as Football Operations Executive for a couple years.
While Dawkins didn't get a Super Bowl ring during his playing career, he did appear in Super Bowl XXXIX, where Philly fell to the New England Patriots, 24-21. In December, Dawkins spoke to CBS Sports about his Eagles, and what the X factor for a Super Bowl run could be.
"Usually the X factor are those individuals that you don't necessarily pay attention to," Dawkins said. "Usually there's a young guy or some guy that you don't expect is going to be "the guy" that all of a sudden steps up and has a tremendous game. So that means that individual throughout the year has been learning, and they have been doing a good job of pouring into this person -- whomever that may be -- and then all of a sudden they get to that game and they become one of the X factors that you're not counting on seeing. Obviously you expect your stars to be stars, but it's usually someone that you don't pay attention to that has perhaps their best career game, in the big game."
