An Eagles Super Bowl win would bring hope to Philadelphians after years of devastating gun violence

As the Eagles compete in the Super Bowl on Sunday, the team will be playing for much more than a trophy.

Philadelphians will be holding their breath, grasping at a hope that after two of the city’s teams lost their top championship games this season, the Birds will bring it home.

Because after everything Philadelphia has endured in the last three years — a pandemic upending social and economic structures, and gun violence levels reaching heights unseen in recent memory — the city needs this.

“Philly needs this one,” said Mckayla Warwick, cofounder of Collective Climb, a West Philadelphia nonprofit working to interrupt the cycle of violence and empower young people.

“It’s more than just a game right now,” Warwick said. “It’s an opportunity for so many people who have been disillusioned, who have lost hope in things getting better, to see this game and see a representation of our city that’s really positive, that’s really beautiful.”

Some families impacted by gun violence will tune in Sunday with heavy but hopeful hearts — proud of a team that has taken greater interest in the issue that upended their lives, but heartbroken that their loved ones aren’t there to share the moment with them.

This year, the Eagles donated $300,000 in grants to six Philly nonprofits doing violence prevention work. In December, children with family members who have been incarcerated spent a day with the team and Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill. Last week, during National Gun Violence Survivors Week, the team released a video acknowledging the city’s underlying pain and hope, featuring a spoken-word poem by a Philadelphia woman who’d lost her brother to gun violence.

After a shooting outside Roxborough High School following a September football game injured four teens and killed 14-year-old Nicolas Elizalde, Eagles players wore Roxborough jerseys and met with Nick’s teammates and family. Quarterback Jalen Hurts visited Nick’s school, had lunch with his friends, and spent time with his mother and grandmother.

“It means so much that they have cared throughout the whole season,” said Meredith Elizalde, Nick’s mom. “They’ve been consistent, it wasn’t just a one-off.”

Nick’s grandma, Marge LaRue, said the Eagles’ success has brought moments of joy and respite amid deep pain and tragedy.

“It just felt like a connection,” she said of watching the team.

The players understand that role in peoples’ lives.

“There’s a joy we bring to the city when we out there playing,” Hurts said in Arizona. “We bring so much excitement to people on Sundays, so much to look forward to. To bring [the Elizaldes] some peace and a sense of joy in such a tough time, with their son’s loss, that’s one of the reasons I do this.”

Eagles players, from rookies to some of the team’s longest-tenured players, have witnessed the impact of gun violence. Longtime kicker Jake Elliott, who signed with the team in September 2017, chose to support the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety for his “My Cause My Cleats” game in December. Linebacker Shaun Bradley honored Elizalde on his cleats.

“What’s so special about this team is that we take on the community and feed off the fan base and we feel really close to this city,” Elliott said Wednesday in Arizona. “We take it personally.”

Eagles edge-rusher Haason Reddick was a walk-on at Temple University and grew up in Camden, which has faced its own violence epidemic. He said the city made him tougher. Now that he’s back playing for his home team after stints in Arizona and North Carolina, he said he feels it’s almost a duty to speak up about the gun violence in Philly.

“We have a platform to get out there to speak and use our voices,” he said Wednesday in Arizona. “We’ve been using it too.”

Rookie linebacker Nakobe Dean, who was among a handful of players who met with high schoolers affected by gun violence at Lincoln Financial Field in November, said the Phillies World Series run taught him how much the city’s spirits can rise and fall with the fate of its teams.

“I feel that now,” he said Wednesday.

Meredith Elizalde and her son always watched the Eagles together, she said, and he would choose the dinner she would make for each game. She’ll watch the Super Bowl alone on Sunday, she said, with Nick’s photograph propped up in a chair, facing the television.

A lifelong Eagles fan, she said a Super Bowl win would in some ways honor Nick, but a small part of her also hopes they lose — because then she won’t have to face a parade without him.

“Everything is tied to him,” she said.

Warwick, of Collective Climb, also recognized that bittersweet feeling for people whose loved ones will be absent for the big game.

“There’s so many family members who won’t be there in the living room to watch the game,” she said. “So even in the midst of this joy, there will be many people who feel that emptiness.”

Still, Elizalde said the Eagles’ support this year not only uplifts victims’ families, but also shows young people who might be living through pain, poverty, or facing violence themselves, that there’s hope.

“It just shows our kids, you might not be a professional athlete ever,” she said, “but there is a life for you after this, if we make it through.”