Brandon Graham’s speech will make you want to suit up

For most of us, it was pretty obvious that we’d have some pretty successful careers in football until about the 12th grade. That’s when the ol’ NFL dream was destined to fall apart. Brandon Graham didn’t have that problem.

B.G. was a captain for the 2006 U.S. Army All-American Bowl and received plenty of recruiting letters before deciding to play his college ball at Michigan for the Wolverines.

A Second-Team All-Big Ten nod (2008) was followed by a First-Team All-American nod, a First-team All-Big Ten designation, and the Big Ten Most Valuable Player Award in 2009. Shortly thereafter, the Philadelphia Eagles made him the 13th-overall selection in the first round of 2010’s NFL Draft.

2021 was supposed to be his 12th season in an Eagles jersey, and dare we say, his farewell tour? Graham suffered a torn Achilles in Week 2 versus the San Francisco 49ers and was placed on Philly’s injured reserve on September 21, 2021, basically ending his season. Don’t think he isn’t on the mind of the Eagles or their fans though. Recently, we caught up with him as he popped up on the Eagles’ timeline and put a smile on a few faces that desperately needed him to do so.

Brandon Graham gives a speech that seems like it should be in a movie.

You’ve seen enough football movies in your life to know how any new attempt at capturing the passion and pain of the gridiron will be played out on television or the big screen. The protagonists are often underdogs. They’re usually led by a new head coach, one that usually isn’t seen as being worthy of being given the position.

The team struggles early. They pull it together towards the end of the tale, and in the big game, a phenomenal speech is given to our heroes, and they pull out the victory. That is unless you’re watching Friday Night Lights. , the Permian Panthers lose their last game, but you get the idea. Normally, the heroes win, often by virtue of a trick play that no one saw coming, a trick play that would never work in a real game.

Life is stranger than fiction sometimes, and leading into the Eagles’ next game, one versus the Las Vegas Raiders, it was Brandon Graham that gave the speech. Check this one out.

Does anyone else feel like suiting up and throwing a helmet on? That one’s worthy of Oscar consideration. Sure, we can create some characters, digital representations of ourselves, and add our names to the Philadelphia Eagles roster on EA’s Madden game, but most of us will never know what it’s like to be in an NFL team’s meeting, at least not until things like this occur.

Our dreams of NFL stardom are long behind us, but thank goodness for social media and Eagles Twitter for allowing us to hang out with the team sometimes. Thank goodness for Brandon Graham as well. He’s done his job. All that’s left is for Philly to go out and topple the Raiders in Vegas.