Super Bowl news: Eric Allen to Hall of Fame; Saquon Barkley wins at NFL Honors; no Birds miss practice due to illness

NEW ORLEANS — Saquon Barkley was named offensive player of the year by the Associated Press on Thursday, further cementing his first season with the Eagles into NFL history.

The 27-year-old was announced as the winner at NFL Honors, but wasn’t in attendance as the Eagles prepare for Super Bowl LIX against the Kansas City Chiefs this Sunday.

The other finalists for the award finishing behind Barkley in the voting were Lamar Jackson, Ja’Marr Chase, Derrick Henry, and Joe Burrow. Barkley received 35 first-place votes to Jackson’s 12.

Barry Sanders spoke with Philly native and NFL Network host Colleen Wolfe on the red carpet about Saquon Barkley and the success he had in his first season with the Eagles, coming 101 yards shy of breaking Eric Dickerson's NFL rushing record.

Earlier in the season, Barkley shared on social media that the Hall of Fame running back had sent him a signed jersey with a special message, and Sanders said Thursday that he was a Barkley fan long before sending him the jersey.

"I did. I can say I was impressed with him," Sannders said. "But I've been watching this kid from when he was at Penn State and just seeing his journey, he was just in a situation where he could be at his best, in a situation that was perfect for him, where he could thrive. So I'm happy to see it.

NEW ORLEANS — Despite not being present for media availability for the second consecutive day Thursday, Eagles defensive tackle Jalen Carter fully participated in practice Thursday afternoon, suggesting he is on track to play Sunday despite being limited Wednesday due to an illness.

Carter is among a few Eagles dealing with illnesses, but none of them missed practice or were limited due to an illness Thursday when the Eagles again practiced at Ochsner Sports Performance Center in Metairie.

Three Eagles were limited with injuries: Brandon Graham (elbow), DeVonta Smith (hamstring), and reserve offensive lineman Nick Gates (groin).

Eagles fans sure hope Saquon Barkley isn’t ready to hang up his cleats any time soon. But when he does, Barkley has huge aspirations.

He told Jeff McLane on unCovering the Birds that he hopes to become the next Michael Strahan, to work on TV outside of just traditional football coverage.

In addition to his work with Fox Sports, Strahan hosted Live! with Kelly and Michael, and currently hosts Good Morning America and The $100,000 Pyramid on ABC, and he’s excited for the prospect of Barkley taking over his many TV hosting roles.

After initially declaring Eagles attire unacceptable for Winslow Township school teachers to show their team pride, the South Jersey school system has had a change of heart.

A controversy ensued this week when Assistant Superintendent Dorothy Carcamo handed down a dress code edict banning Eagles gear in a memo distributed to principals ahead of the Super Bowl. She noted then that the district’s “primary focus remains student achievement.” Winslow enrolls 4,500 students.

“We are not here to represent the Eagles or any other sport team,” she wrote in the memo, obtained by the Inquirer. “Therefore, your staff should not be dressed in any football or other athletic attire.”

“It’s never good when you all want to talk to us,” Fox Sports rules analyst Mike Pereira joked before sitting down for Fox Sports media day.

The theory that NFL officials go out of their way to favor the Chiefs has steadily spread as Kansas City approaches their third consecutive Super Bowl. The team has dominated ever since Patrick Mahomes took the reins as starting quarterback, but with it have come a few controversial officiating decisions.

“Everybody know how it is playing up [in Kansas City],” Texans running back Joe Mixon said. “You can never leave it into the refs’ hands. The whole world see, man.”

This is Jimmy Johnson’s 31st season as a studio analyst for Fox, which dwarfs the nine years he spent coaching in the NFL, most memorably with the Dallas Cowboys.

Over the years, Johnson has gotten to know Andy Reid, and just filmed an interview with the Kansas City Chiefs’ head coach that will air during Fox’s Super Bowl pregame show Sunday.

Nick Sirianni? Not so much.

The Eagles have had the best offensive line in football for the past three seasons, according to Pro Football Focus' rankings, and giving a noticeable boost to the Eagles' top running back in each of those years.

"It's a little easier this year when you got those big guys upfront creating the holes they've been creating," Saquon Barkley said at Monday's Super Bowl press conference.

Those "big guys" helped Barkley double the average number of yards he gained before contact compared to last season with the New York Giants, from 1.9 to 3.8, according to Pro Football Reference. The Giants OL was ranked 30th last year by Pro Football Focus.

The Eagles’ attempt to run the Tush Push against the Commanders was a career highlight for Fox's Mike Pereira, rules analyst and former NFL vice president of officiating.

As Frankie Luvu jumped twice before the Eagles could run a play, and the Commanders took a third offsides penalty, the ref announced he could “award a score” if the Commanders did not clean up their act. Pereira then shared on FOX that it could be a use for the Palpably Unfair Act.

“When you get to that, it’s called the Palpably Unfair Act, which I’ve been waiting for 15 years to say on air,” Pereira said Thursday. “I was so excited, almost spit it out right away.”

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker ended a Thursday news conference on Super Bowl preparations with a re-do of her famously botched Eagles chance from last month.

"Let me see if can get it right this time," Parker said, before correctly spelling out E-A-G-L-E-S. She added that with that, she hoped to have gotten some street cred back with her son, Langston.

Parker's gaffe last month, in which she misspelled the team's name as "E-L-G-S-E-S" ahead of the NFC championship, went viral. She later poked fun at the mistake, saying that "we don't promise perfection."

Road closures in Philadelphia will be similar to those employed following the NFC championship last month, city officials said Thursday.

Officials plan to launch closures along Broad Street in South Philadelphia and Center City, and at Frankford and Cottman and the Five Points intersection in Northeast Philadelphia, among other areas. Additional details are expected to be announced as Sunday approaches.

In addition to road closures, SEPTA is planning on a number of bus detours to accommodate road closures, as well as rolling subway station closures in the event of an Eagles win, said the agency's general manager Scott Sauer. Closures of Center City stops on the Market-Frankford Line and the Broad Street Line will be conducted in accordance with direction from law enforcement, he added.

There are traitors among us in Kansas City.

When Philly institution Chickie’s and Pete’s opened an outpost inside Kansas City’s Bally Casino in 2023, it was trading on its reputation as the “official sports bar of the Philadelphia Eagles.”

So much for that.

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker implored Eagles fans to not climb light poles or any other structure in the event of an Eagles win on Sunday.

"Climbing or attempting to climb a light pole or a bus shelter, or any structure for that matter, it can lead to tragedy," Parker said at a Thursday news conference. "Just don't climb onto anything, OK? That's our golden rule."

Following the Eagles' NFC championship victory last month, Tyler Sabapathy, a Temple Student, died of injuries he sustained after falling from a street pole near City Hall. Parker later offered her condolences to Sabapathy's family, saying that fans must celebrate "in a way that does not result in this kind of tragedy."

It sounds like Eagles coach Nick Sirianni will open the floor for players to speak in the final team meeting this Saturday, similar to what he did before Super Bowl LVII.

Sirianni has said before that he picked up the tradition during his college career at Mount Union, allowing players to address one another instead of making a speech himself to close things out.

"What you got to see was how much the guys cared about each other," Sirianni said. "The whole conversation, when guys would get up there, just talking about how much they mean to each other and how they're going to play for each other. All those different things. ... It meant a lot. We'll probably try to recreate that."

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro will be at Super Bowl LIX Sunday to watch his beloved Eagles take on the Kansas City Chiefs in New Orleans.

Embodying his usual sports talk radio persona of “Josh from Juniata,” Shapiro called into 97.5 The Fanatic’s Mike Missanelli Show Thursday to chat about the Birds’ third trip to the Super Bowl in seven years and Shapiro’s role as Pennsylvania’s “chief cheerleader” on Sunday.

“I like our chances, man, I really, really do. I'm feeling really good,” Shapiro said.

Can Saquon Barkley become the first running back — and first non-quarterback — to win MVP since Adrian Peterson in 2012? We'll find out tonight at the NFL Honors awards show, which airs at 9 p.m. on Fox and NFL Network.

It’s unlikely he wins, but Barkley is a finalist along with four quarterbacks for the Associated Press’ for NFL MVP award. His fellow finalists are Buffalo’s Josh Allen, Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow, Detroit’s Jared Goff, and Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson.

Barkley, who also is a finalist for Offensive Player of the Year, led the NFL with 2,005 rushing yards during the regular season. He became the ninth player in NFL history to cross the 2,000-yard mark.

Fox analyst Greg Olsen has a soft spot for tight ends, which is natural given he played the position for 14 seasons, mostly with the Carolina Panthers.

Not surprisingly, all of the national attention going into the Super Bowl is on Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, and rightfully so — only Hall of Fame wideout Jerry Rice has more receiving yards and touchdowns in the playoffs than Kelce. Oh, and he’s also dating someone named Taylor Swift and co-hosts an immensely popular podcast with his brother, former Eagles star Jason Kelce.

As a result, Olsen thinks Eagles tight end Dallas Goedert is flying under the radar and could be a surprise factor in Sunday’s game, referring to him as the “forgotten man” in the Birds’ offense earlier in the week.

When the Philadelphia Eagles lost to the Kansas City Chiefs in 2023, the Philadelphia School District gave students and staff a pass, and called a two-hour post-Super Bowl delay.

In 2018, when the Birds took home the Lombardi trophy, the next day was a regular school day.

Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. is a former history teacher, he noted. And apparently superstitious.

Despite Tommy Tuberville’s claims, the current Alabama senator and former Texas Tech head coach never coached or recruited Patrick Mahomes, Mahomes confirmed on Thursday.

President Donald Trump recounted a conversation on Wednesday with Tuberville about coaching Mahomes. Tuberville left Texas Tech for Cincinnati after the 2012 season. Mahomes started at Texas Tech in 2014.

“Tommy Tuberville, a great coach,” Trump said. “You know, his quarterback was named Mahomes, he was a great college coach. And I said, how good was he? He said, you don't want to know how good.”

Four days out from taking the field at the Super Bowl, and the Eagles have some good news on the injury front.

Center Cam Jurgens (back) and guard Landon Dickerson (knee) were full participants in practice Thursday. It was Jurgens' first practice since injuring his back during the Birds divisional round win against the Los Angeles Rams.

Dickerson started at center during the NFC championship game, but was replaced by Jurgens in the second half after suffering a knee injury.

During the 2018 NFL draft, the Eagles traded up 17 spots in the seventh round to draft Jordan Mailata, then a little-know Australian rugby player who had never played American football.

As The Inquirer’s Jeff McLane reported in 2021, Eagles offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland believed the Pittsburgh Steelers were also interested in nabbing Mailata, so Roseman moved up several spots to land the future All-Pro. 

It’s a good thing he did, because the Los Angeles Rams were also interested. 

Eagles general manager Howie Roseman reiterated Monday that Chiefs head coach Andy Reid ingrained in Roseman the importance of investing major assets in offensive and defensive linemen, even if they were unlikely to play right away. Reid was the de facto general manager for much of his tenure in Philadelphia while Roseman was learning the ropes.

That philosophy has paid off for the Eagles since Reid was fired and Roseman took over in 2013 (Roseman briefly lost power in 2015, one of the Eagles’ worst drafts in 30 years). The Eagles have made the playoffs in seven of the past eight seasons. They had the best offensive line in football in 2019 and 2023, and they’ve had a top-6 offensive line each of those playoff seasons; the only time they didn’t, 2020, they missed the playoffs.

Beginning with 2013 first-round offensive tackle Lane Johnson, Roseman drafted 13 offensive or defensive linemen drafted in the first three rounds. Only 2019 first-round left tackle Andre Dillard failed to contribute in a manner consistent with his pedigree, and that largely was because Jordan Mailata, a seventh-rounder miracle from 2018, developed far beyond any sane expectations.

It appears unlikely Howie Roseman and the Eagles will make a big push to trade for Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett, especially as the team continues to say they won't trade the reigning NFL Defensive Player of the Year and six-time Pro Bowler.

But the idea of landing in Philadelphia is something Garrett has given some thought.

"We went there for a preseason [game] and I definitely got me a cheesesteak. It lived up to my hopes," Garrett said Wednesday as a guest on The Zach Gelb Show on CBS Sports Radio