In the minutes before the Eagles open the NFL season against the Dallas Cowboys, there will be one final celebration of Super Bowl LIX.
The Eagles are unveiling two banners on Thursday night at Lincoln Finacial Field, one in the North corner celebrating both Super Bowl wins and the 2024 World Champions banner on the East side.
The Eagles started the banner planning shortly after the Super Bowl Parade, but they knew that because of summer events they wouldn't go up until after the preseason. There were also some moving parts.
Due to the number of banners — the Eagles have banners from their NFC East Championships, NFC Championships, and Super Bowl titles — the Eagles had to move some around so the 16-foot by 14-foot 2024 World Champions banner would properly fit.
"We knew that was a bigger undertaking than in years past," said Vice President of Facilities Operations Ryan Hummel. "We did joke about, you know, we'll do that every year, and hopefully we run out of room."
Once they had everything in place, it was a matter of getting the banner up.
Eastern Sign Tech, which spent more than 70 hours creating the banner, brought a 20-ton crane to Lincoln Financial Field, which lifted the 2024 banner on a cable system. The group of technicians brought it up over three levels in two separate phases before it was assembled in the rafters.
Then it was on to setting up for Thursday night's presentation.
"Really looking at it and trying to create the best thing that we could for the fans that would be in the stadium on gameday or watching from home or watching wherever they are in the world," Hummel said.
Cowboys vs. Eagles marks the start of a new NFL season, and Head Coach Nick Sirianni and his players have been clear that they're not looking back to 2024. It's onto a new season, and if it ends in the same way, the Eagles will be prepared for another banner.
"We're ultimately set up to hang a couple more with the spacing that we have before we have to look at potentially doing another shuffle of the banners," Hummel said. — Written by Matt Ryan
