🦅 It’s the Super Bowl Sunday edition | Morning Newsletter

Today we’re giving you a Super Bowl Sunday special edition with our best Eagles coverage.

I’m so jacked up for Super Bowl Sunday, I could chase a train into a pillar.

I’ve been an Eagles fan for a long time, and 2018 was just so magical. (I want aspiring actors to perform Kevin Hart’s video about trying to steal the trophy as a monologue.) And now it’s five years later, and we’re back.

Last time we checked in on the playlist, the Eagles were counting on Creed to get the team “juiced up.” OK!

Our own Josh Tolentino saw it coming last year.

And Marcus Hayes’ column says it best. To me, victory is never sweeter than when you’re silencing haters.

And today’s the day.

If you see this 🔑 in today’s newsletter, that means we’re highlighting our exclusive journalism. You need to be a subscriber to read these stories.

— Ashley Hoffman (@_AshleyHoffman, morningnewsletter@inquirer.com)

Because we’re in the Grand Canyon state today, let’s get mysterious.

Funny story: On the morning of Tuesday, Dec. 11, 1984, Arizona Republic columnist Bob Hurt broke the story of the Eagles’ impending relocation to Sun Devil Stadium, home of the Arizona State football team and the Fiesta Bowl.

How it started: With a mystery. How did this columnist find out? Who was his informer?

How it ended: “It ended after the community turned its outrage and anger like a laser toward former owner Leonard Tose and his family, even its youngest member,” columnist Mike Sielski writes. I love the depth of this dive. Let Mike walk you through this dark period ... and the light.

Today’s little game aside, Eagles center Jason Kelce has had a “more provocative piece of Kelce family lore on his mind,” detailed in Jeremy Roebuck and Abraham Gutman’s story, worth reading all the way through.

For starters, Jason posed a question to his mother on a recent episode of his podcast New Heights, which is a delight. “Was grandpa actually charged with treason?” he asked his mother, Donna Kelce. He jokingly concluded that his mother’s father, Donald Roy Blalock, had “help[ed] out the Russians.” Let’s go to an excerpt from our story:

“He was charged in the early ‘80s in an industrial espionage case involving allegations of underhanded business dealings with a Soviet truck manufacturer.

Local media accounts and court records lay out the story: At the time, Blalock was working as the director of contract management for C-E Cast Equipment Co., a machine tool part manufacturer based in Cleveland — a job he’d landed after 20 years of service to the company, including four as its salesman in a Soviet city near the base of the Ural Mountains, according to a report in the Cleveland Plain Dealer now housed in the CIA’s digital archives.”

We know one thing for sure. Characters run in this family. He may not have been charged with treason, but he ultimately pleaded guilty to a lesser, misdemeanor offense of receiving stolen property valued at less than $150. This story has absolutely everything including newspaper clippings from the ‘80s. One of them introduces us to Jason’s grandpa with the line “IN OTHER raids.”

Our beat reporters think the Eagles can win this thing. But as for whether we capture the trophy, their perspectives differ. It’s worth reading how EJ Smith, Jeff McLane, and Josh Tolentino think it will all shake out.

Hopefully we do stuff like this again tonight:

🦅 Columnist Marcus Hayes says the Eagles are absorbing more Philly hate at Super Bowl LVII.

🦅 Eagles’ Autumn Lockwood set to become the first Black woman to coach in a Super Bowl.

🦅 Beat writer Josh Tolentino says the Eagles are ‘moving people off the ball like I’ve never seen.’

🦅 Columnist Jeff McLane writes about Andy Reid facing his old team with coach Nick Sirianni at the helm, and why this means so much for Jeff Lurie.

🦅 And I’m resurfacing columnist Mike Sielski on a true warrior, Lane Johnson, who powered through his injuries.

🦅 A coloring book with Jalen Hurts holding a football on fire? That’s refrigerator material.

🦅 Play a game of Birdle.

🦅 Let’s get into the meaning of “It’s a Philly thing.”

🦅 See Gov. Josh Shapiro’s game prediction and his bets with the governors of Missouri and Kansas.

🦅 Enjoy some scenes of Super Bowl action.

What was the original Eagles battle cry called?

A) Slay All Day Eagles

B) Fight, Eagles Fight

C) Eagles Take Flight

D) Don’t Mess This One Up

Find out if you remember the answer.

The instrument that Jason Kelce used to play.

AXONHOPES

We’ll select a reader at random to shout out here. Send us your own original anagram to unscramble if you’d like. Email us if you know the answer. Cheers to Terri Chalmers who correctly guessed Friday’s answer: Rihanna.

🎶 All day today, we’ll be listening to “Fly Eagles Fly.”🎶

👋🏽 Give ‘em hell out there.