GREEN BAY, Wis. \u2014 Eagles legend Brandon Graham will officially make his return to the field tonight against the Packers at Lambeau Field.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m excited, man,\u201d Graham said on Saturday. \u201cNo expectations. Just going out there just like it\u2019s been in practice. Enjoying the time and just excited to see these boys because they put in some work this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cJust bringing the energy. That\u2019s it. Bringing that energy. We all been leading out there. Just excited to see [Jaelan Phillilps], see how he adds to what we already got. Just can\u2019t wait to see Jalyx and all them boys up front get after it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Graham, 37, officially unretired a few weeks ago but was not activated to the 53-man roster for the Eagles\u2019 Week 8 game against the Giants. The target was to have him ready for Monday Night Football in Green Bay.<\/p>\n
And after three weeks of preparing, Graham is ready to take the field for his franchise-record 16th NFL season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been good,\u201d he said. \u201cI was honestly shocked myself. Like, \u2018Wow, OK, I can do this for real.\u2019 Because this is my first time coming off the couch for real and coming right into it. It\u2019s great. Feel fresh.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFeel like I\u2019ve been training, getting ready for training camp and now I\u2019m going through my little training camp phase of the three weeks I\u2019ve been going in practice and stuff even during the bye week. Now I\u2019m just excited to go out there and play one game at a time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Monday night will be Graham\u2019s 207th career regular season game. The next closest player on the all-time franchise list is Jason Kelce, who played in 193.<\/p>\n
Graham said he knows he\u2019s ready to take the field after participating in practice in recent weeks. There wasn\u2019t anything in particular that stood out.<\/p>\n
But after a decade and a half in the NFL, Graham\u2019s experience tells him he\u2019s good.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve seen guys that came in and was like, \u2018Oh yeah, it\u2019s time. It\u2019s time for them to let it go,\u2019\u201d Graham said before unleashing one of his signature cackles. \u201cI was hoping that wasn\u2019t for me either. For me, I honestly still feel the same as I felt last year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before tearing his triceps in Week 12 against the Rams last season, Graham was playing at a high level in what was supposed to be his final NFL season. Defensive coordinator Vic Fangio played Graham a lot and Graham rewarded him with 3 1\/2 sacks, 7 QB hits and 6 TFLs in 11 games.<\/p>\n
Since Graham\u2019s decision to come out of retirement, the Eagles went out and traded for Philips from Miami to further bolster the edge rusher rotation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been around for a long time,\u201d Graham said. \u201cIf we got a team the way we do right now. He felt like he was a couple pieces away. We always, every time I\u2019ve been here, we always have a deep edge rushing room. I look at it like iron sharpening iron and that\u2019s just the truth. You have to have other irons in here in order for us to keep getting better. It\u2019s motivating.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GREEN BAY, Wis. \u2014 Eagles legend Brandon Graham will officially make his return to the field tonight against…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":369144,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,81149,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-369143","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-eagles-blog","10":"tag-pa","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115525382648287048","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}