The NFL’s defense of DEI can start with the Eagles’ successful history of Black quarterbacks

Like generations of Philadelphians before me, I know that the hometown Eagles historically never paid much heed to the jokes, snickers, sneers, and hideous stereotypes about Black quarterbacks. Nor, apparently, does the 2025 Super Bowl team give a dang about the most ridiculous and divisive memos and edicts of 2025 that already are intruding into the lead-up of a championship game that will feature not just one, but two African American signal-callers.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell felt compelled to publicly reject yet more pushes for nationwide shelving of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies on all levels this week during preliminary activities for Sunday’s Super Bowl LIX between the Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs.

“I believe that our diversity efforts have led to making the NFL better,” Goodell said when asked whether the sport will continue its DEI policies.

Goodell took up the challenge when he spoke during his annual Super Bowl press conference, fielding a question likely borne out of recent opinions from those in high places that the color of one’s skin can be an acceptable measuring stick for one’s capabilities.

Goodell said the league will stick by its DEI beliefs, adding: “It’s attracted better talent. We think we’re better when we get different perspectives, people with different backgrounds. We make ourselves stronger, and we make ourselves better when we have that.”

The fact that he spoke from the “home team” locker room at the New Orleans Superdome was delicious, since that apparently will be the room where the Eagles will launch their bid for a second Super Bowl title.

» READ MORE: Jeff McLane: Jalen Hurts takes pride in carrying the torch as the next in the Eagles’ legacy of Black quarterbacks.

Goodell said the Eagles are one franchise that doesn’t need to be dissuaded from the belief that DEI is dead. The Eagles know fair play is not foul, level playing fields are not ludicrous, and meritocracies are not meritless.

Especially in their backfield.

The team that is set to play its fourth Super Bowl in 21 years skipped ahead of so many other NFL teams on the then-prickly issue of Black QBs long ago by choosing to ignore the noise spewed for decades by the darkest of hearts. Others might have tried to dissuade all pro teams from considering, signing, then following franchise quarterbacks whose skin happened to be Black. The Eagles have followed such arms for a large part of the last 40 years.

Randall Cunningham. Rodney Peete. Donovan McNabb. Michael Vick. And now Jalen Hurts.

If Goodell felt compelled to forcefully reject yet more pushes for a forced leaguewide shelving of DEI policies, he didn’t really have to do so on behalf of the Eagles. This is one team that has long shot down the ridiculous salvos Black quarterbacks previously had to dodge in so many places since seemingly forever. Now Hurts & Co., having earned a second Super Bowl showdown in three years with the Chiefs dynasty, are primed to show off that they have been living an inclusive meritocracy longer than most any other NFL team.

Seems like only yesterday that Buddy Ryan had to defend the team’s drafting of Cunningham out of UNLV as anything but a gimmick. Ryan did that and more. The craggy coach who initially built his legend with the Bears and their defensive powerhouse Monsters of the Midway in Chicago, flipped the script in Philadelphia when he turned Cunningham loose in the QB’s first full season in 1986. Just like that, Ryan stunningly turned the game on its head. All it took was reinventing the industry’s approach to how it used quarterbacks.

» READ MORE: Marcus Hayes: Donovan McNabb is the greatest quarterback in franchise history. Why can't he just be that?

In one of the greatest chapters of the glory days of Philadelphia sports, Ryan utilized Cunningham’s keen football IQ and skills — brains, brawn, arms, and legs — without reinventing the athlete by way of a move from the “thinking man’s” position. The model for the dual-threat quarterback was born, and it was electrifying.

You’re welcome, Donovan McNabb, Cam Newton, Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Jalen Hurts.

Cunningham, who played in South Philly from 1985 to 1995, indelibly etched his name in franchise lore. As the Eagles opened the 2024 season, Cunningham was still in good standing in terms of impact, ranking third in franchise history in passing yards (22,877) and TD passes (150). He ranks sixth all-time among the Eagles in rushing yards (4,482) and rushing TDs (32).

Though Cunningham went on to play for the Vikings, Cowboys, and Ravens, there was little doubt where his legend grew and his heart remained. On the day Buddy Ryan died on June 28, 2016, Cunningham, speaking lovingly of Ryan’s faith and loyalty in him as a player, as a man, told Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia: “That just showed the side of Buddy being a loving coach and like a father figure who cared about his kids more than anybody would know. So that was the positive thing about being in Philadelphia, is that I had a coach who didn’t care what everybody else thought — he was more concerned about us as his children, and that was a blessing.”

McNabb? The kind of bond of which Cunningham spoke was also evident when it came to Philadelphia’s next groundbreaker and his coach, Andy Reid, currently the Chiefs’ famed architect.

Drafted by the Eagles out of Syracuse in 1999, McNabb helped solidify the prototype run-and-throw dual threat that Cunningham had minted. McNabb played in the league for 13 years, mostly as an Eagle. In all, he passed for 37,276 yards and 234 touchdowns. The six-time Pro Bowler also rushed for 3,459 career yards.

McNabb arguably was the prime foundational piece of the Eagles teams that made themselves at home among the game’s elites during Reid’s reign in South Philly. Those Reid teams drove deep into five consecutive playoffs. And it was McNabb who led the team to the franchise’s second Super Bowl appearance. That was the crowning moment that followed a stellar 13-3 regular season in 2004 when he threw for 3,875 yards and a career-high 31 touchdowns.

Though the Eagles lost to New England in the Super Bowl — McNabb did throw three crucial interceptions in the 24-21 defeat — the loss and the picks did not, could not obscure McNabb’s otherwise memorable 357-yard, three-touchdown performance.

So, while prima donnas, sports pundits, and pro players long ago forgotten, plus boisterous boxers and blowhards may have chosen to opine back in the day on the “rightness” of McNabb running the show, or professing to be Black, this much remains clear: By the end of his career, even to some of his fiercest critics, Donovan McNabb was no joke.

Even today, McNabb is ranked by many publications and fans as the top quarterback in the history of this storied franchise.

And the Eagles continue to be no joke, either, on the field or off when it comes to slaying false narratives that diversity, equity, and inclusion, rather than prejudice and biases should be feared.

Claire Smith is the founding executive director of the Claire Smith Center for Sports Media at Temple University. She is in the writers wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame and a Red Smith Award honoree.