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Fly, 🦅 Fly: The Eagles’ recent run of success has coincided with the release of the eagle emoji

It was released with 104 other emoji in the winter of 2016. The next year, the Eagles won the Super Bowl.

The launch of the popular eagle emoji onto smartphones and digital devices everywhere in 2016 correlates to one of the best run of form the Eagles have had in over the last eight seasons.
The launch of the popular eagle emoji onto smartphones and digital devices everywhere in 2016 correlates to one of the best run of form the Eagles have had in over the last eight seasons.Read moreJulia Duarte / Staff Illustration / Photography by The Inquirer & Getty

The Eagles’ wealth of success and subsequent notoriety over the last nine seasons have been largely due to the players, personnel, and a little bit of luck along the way.

But what if we told you that there’s also an interesting and uncanny juxtaposition between the Eagles’ recent run of success and the creation of … the eagle emoji? 🦅

Introduced to the emoji library in December 2016, the distinctive bird, which doesn’t vary too much in its appearance depending on what device you’re using, has been the universal digital symbol of perhaps the most successful run of Eagles football in the team’s history.

🏈 The numbers tell the story, really.

Since the launch of the emoji, the Eagles have had winning seasons in seven of the last eight years — after two in their previous six — and have made the playoffs each of those seven seasons. The lone exception was their dismal 4-11 season in 2020, but even that led to the arrival of Nick Sirianni and the start of the Jalen Hurts era.

Sure, it wasn’t all bad. The team made the postseason 10 times but had just one Super Bowl appearance in 2004.

» READ MORE: This week in Philly history, Nick Foles leads the Eagles to their first Super Bowl victory

The team has also won 83 games since its release (83-48) and scored its second-most points in a playoff game ever just last month, in the 55-23 NFC title game win over Washington. You’d have to go all the way back to the 1995-96 season for the last time the team put up that many points in the postseason (a 58-37 wild-card win against the Lions).

Sunday will be the Eagles’ third Super Bowl appearance in nine seasons, and if they win, it will mark their second Super Bowl title, having won their first during the 2017-18 season, the year after the emoji was approved and released on virtually every device.

And as emoji have become a staple of digital conversations and storytelling, the eagle has definitely been woven into the fabric of Philly speak when it comes to the Birds.

“Emoji have become an essential part of communicating in digital spaces, evolving into a visual language that conveys emotion, identity, and even coded meaning,” said Desmond Upton Patton, a Penn professor and chief strategy officer of the university’s School of Social Policy and Practice.

“These symbols can signal inside jokes, affiliations, or even warnings — meanings that are deeply contextual and culturally specific. This kind of visual shorthand is also why fans, like Eagles supporters using the [eagle] emoji, adopt symbols as a way to build identity and connection.”

But it’s not just about making the NFL playoffs since the drop of the emoji; it’s also about the level of success in that span, with four NFC East titles and three conference championship appearances, all of which have coincided with trips to the Super Bowl.

» READ MORE: A 15-year-old in West Chester found the 1960 Eagles NFL championship trophy in his grandmother’s closet

“I use it all the time,” said Ryan Diamond, a self-proclaimed “Eagles nut” and graphic designer from Swarthmore, who said he has four to five different group chats to talk about the Birds with various friends and family about the team. “You can find that emoji in almost every text I’m in on. It’s just become a part of the conversation; it’s impossible not to use it.

“I kind of remember when it dropped and thought, how cool is this? We have our own emoji, and then that next season, the Birds run the entire division, and I’m parading down Broad Street. Even though it had nothing to do with the success of the team in the literal sense, it does kind of feel like it does. [Laughs] It’s almost like the tech gods and the football gods knew it was our time.”

🦅 Who chose the eagle emoji?

The eagle’s arrival to the emoji landscape was by design, but not for what it is widely used for across the Greater Philadelphia Region and the larger Eagles Nation. It was part of a batch of 104 different emoji designed by Apple as part of its update for iOS 10.2, which still needed approval from Unicode, a nonprofit consortium of developers and designers who actually approve emoji suggestions before they are sent out into the world.

The eagle, included in a pack alongside the launch of other popular emoji that year like the clown, the owl, the LOL, the avocado, and the expecting mother, was actually designed to suggest American patriotism, with the bird regarded as a symbol of freedom for the nation.

Anyone can suggest an emoji design, and any company can work on that design, but it’s the rotating members and leaders of the Unicode Consortium who give the final approval. How people choose to use or interact with that emoji afterward, however, is out of their hands — looking at you, eggplant.

A request for comment from the current Unicode team was not returned by the time of this report. But Patton, whose research has extensively included emoji, and their role as it relates to social media, artificial intelligence, and youth expression, says they have far surpassed just being an exclamation as they were intended.

» READ MORE: Who would you put in an all-time Eagles Super Bowl dream team? Tell us.

“I’ve seen how [emoji] go beyond simple reactions,” Patton wrote, “they help shape online culture, form digital communities, and offer a way to express complex emotions when words might fall short.”

In the case of the eagle emoji, it’s not only spawned how Philly fans communicate about its beloved football team, but judging by recent history its advent has doubled as a bit of a digital good luck charm.