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Off The Beat: Jake Elliott, Good At Sports

Jake Elliott has hit arguably the two biggest field goals in Eagles history.

His 61-yard-hold-your-breath kick gave the Eagles a 24-21 win and changed the course of the season, propelling the team to a Super Bowl appearance. Then, in that very Super Bowl, Elliott hit a 46-yarder with just over a minute to go to push the Eagles' lead to eight. A miss from there would have given Tom Brady and the Patriots the ball at basically midfield trailing by just five points.

He's undoubtedly a clutch kicker, but Elliott's athleticism reaches far beyond the gridiron. In fact, growing up just outside of Chicago, Elliott played just about every sport imaginable, and he was really good at all of them.

"My family is pretty athletic," Elliott said. "Naturally, I just have pretty good hand-eye coordination and can pick up on things pretty quickly. I obviously picked up kicking a football pretty quickly and kind of ran with it."

Surely there must be one sport out there that Elliott isn't great at.

Right?

Tennis

"My first sport was tennis. I was probably threeish. I started playing soccer at a young age, but tennis was my first sport. I try to (still play) a couple times a year. It's just harder to do during football season, but I'll get out there a few times in the offseason.

"It was still up in the air (whether to stick with tennis or football) into senior year of high school, really. I was still looking at schools for tennis while I was looking at schools for football. While I was being recruited for football, I would kind of check out their tennis facilities and vice versa. Once football kind of grabbed the reins, I had to go with it.

"Realistically, it was a money thing at the time. There just aren't a lot of full scholarships out there for tennis. It was 20 percent at this school or 20 percent at that school, but it's hard to turn down a full ride.

"If I had really dedicated myself at a younger age (I could have potentially gone pro) - the tough part about that is that there are so many good kids out there and the top tennis guys are only tennis guys. They're training four hours a day and hitting balls every day, and I'm doing that for 1/3 of the year while the rest of the guys are doing it every single day. It's just kind of hard to keep up."

Golf

"It's always something I've played for fun. I picked it up at a maybe 7 or 8 years old, a couple times a year. I didn't start playing a ton until late in high school and early college, but it kind of took off from there.

"I'm at like a two (handicap) right now."

Pretty sure that's really, really good.

Hockey

"I played like roller hockey or in the winter when the ponds freeze over just for fun. I mean I'm not great, but I can hold my own."

False modesty?

Basketball

"Yeah, I was pretty good at basketball. I played that until my junior year of high school, and then I ultimately gave that up because I wanted to focus more on tennis."

Just like on the football field, Elliott was probably good at 3-pointers ... I'll see myself out.

Baseball

Check the 57-second mark of this video for proof of Jake's shortstop skills.

"I played that up until high school. I had to make a choice between tennis and baseball in high school."

In his Media Guide bio, Elliott says that if he could play another sport, he'd be the shortstop for the Chicago Cubs. Javy Baez may need to worry about Elliott claiming that spot.

Bar Games

"Actually, those are my best. Pool, ping-pong - ping-pong is one of my best sports, probably. Darts, I'm not too bad.

"Kamu's (Grugier-Hill) pretty good. I used to play with Caleb (Sturgis) a lot when he was still here. I would say Kamu is one of the best. Jordan Mailata's not bad either.

"Me and Cam (Johnston) play a lot of pool together and we've had some good games."

Yard Games

"Yeah, I'm good at cornhole. That's my game, man."

No surprise here. There are cornhole (Writer's Note: not baggo) boards in the Eagles' locker room.

Video Games

"I'm not a video game guy. That's my thing. I don't really play video games at all."

There it is! If you want to beat Jake Elliott in any sort of game, challenge him to a game of Madden. Although honestly, he'd probably still win.

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