PHILADELPHIA — Eagles legend Brandon Graham stood at his locker Friday afternoon and humbly received “The 2025 Good Guy Award” from the Pro Football Writers Association.
Inscribed at the bottom: “For your qualities and professional style in helping pro football writers do their jobs.”
It was a national award that was meant to be a final thank you for his 15 years of cooperation with the local and national media after he retired following the Eagles’ Super Bowl LIX victory.
But now he’s back and still being BG in so many ways.
Ten minutes after thanking the gathered media, he was helping this writer do his job again. I haven’t kept track of how many times that has happened since Graham came to the Eagles as a first-round pick in 2010, but I know more than my fingers and toes are required to reach that number.
Friday is typically a slow day in a football locker room. The players are happy the practice week is over and looking forward to Sunday’s game, which this week will be an NFC East showdown against the high-powered Dallas Cowboys. The writers have already filled up their notebooks with stories for the weekend and are often trying to work ahead for the following week.
Graham, however, made me run an audible just by having a conversation about one of his teammates who has disappeared from the playing field in recent weeks.
Since Graham has come out of retirement and Jaelan Phillips has joined the Eagles via a trade with the Miami Dolphins, Josh Uche has gone from playing an average of 26 snaps per game to playing zero snaps in the Eagles’ last two games.
Uche could see the writing on the wall after the moves, but that didn’t make things any easier for the eighth-year veteran who, by most accounts, was playing pretty well in his first season with the Eagles. Pro Football Focus still has him as the team’s highest graded defensive player and his 20 pressures remain fourth on the team despite the fact he has not played the last two games.
In reality, it is Graham’s return from retirement more than Phillips’ arrival that has cut into Uche’s playing time, which was going to be reduced any way after Nolan Smith’s removal from the injured list.
“It’s out of my hands,” Uche told NJ Advance Media. “I’ve done everything I can. I was on a streak my last two games. I don’t know. I just know what I bring to the game and it’s just something out of my control. I just let the film speak for itself and if someone needs my services the film is there to speak to what I can do.”
Graham, once considered a first-round draft bust and now No. 3 on the Eagles’ all-time sacks list, said he has spoken to Uche because he empathizes with his situation. Graham said he has admired how rookie Jihaad Campbell has handled reduced playing time since Nakobe Dean has returned as the starting linebacker. He has told both the rookie Campbell and the veteran Uche the same thing.
“It’s easy to get in your head about it and then be mad,” Graham said. “I always say, ‘Your opportunity is always watching and it’s waiting for you to take your eyes up off it and then it comes. And then what? And then you’re mad because you took your eyes off it because of your emotions that you dealt with not playing.
“You don’t want to waste that one moment you could have had that could have changed everything because you let your emotions get the best of you. I’m loving that (Campbell) is not in that place. He’s really rooting for others and waiting for when his chance comes to go out there and compete.”
Uche’s situation isn’t the same as Campbell’s. He’s a veteran whose career has been in a descending trajectory in recent seasons and he felt like things were looking up with the Eagles. Campbell, on the other hand, is a rookie who knows the time is going to come when he is on the field all the time.
“I’ve been trying to stay on (Uche),” Graham said. “I told him exactly what I just said. I tell him, ‘Don’t forget who you are.’ I know he might be thinking, ‘Damn, if (Graham) didn’t come back and I was like, ‘Man, I don’t want to step on nobody’s toes or take food out of somebody’s mouth. But we are all here together and we are here because they believe in all of us.
“I’m not in competition with him. We compete out there and we’re all having fun, but I want to make sure that you as a man is cool because outside of football it’s love in here. Sometimes people can’t separate the business from the personal and you’ll have a guy mad at you when they’re really mad at the situation. I always tell Josh, ‘I’m with you and I want to help you.’ ”
Graham’s message every day to his teammates is “let’s go have fun” and “enjoy the journey.”
“This ain’t an easy league,” Graham said. “The really hard part is that people are so quick to throw people away once they don’t need them. I just want people to know I am still here for them. Whenever somebody new came in to take my job, I was always welcoming. I’d be like, ‘You want to know something, I can help you with a bunch of stuff. I am where I’m at from the people in my journey before me and I want to help you get to where you’re going.’ ”
Uche understands that.
“BG is always that light,” he said. “That positive energy and encouragement just permeates throughout the whole building and the room. And I sit right next to him in our meeting room.”
Graham has only been on the field for 18 plays since coming out of retirement and he has three pressures, but his impact has always been far greater than what he does on the field. His brief retirement has not changed that.
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