Getty The New York Giants won the Super Bowl after Vince Young called the Philadelphia Eagles a "Dream Team" in 2011.
Does history repeat itself in the NFL? After hearing what Philadelphia Eagles running back Miles Sanders said this week, New York Giants fans are inclined to hope so.
In a Q&A with Cody Benjamin of CBS Sports, Sanders was asked about some of the Eagles’ offseason additions and provided a slightly presumptuous answer.
ALL the latest Giants news straight to your inbox! Subscribe to the Heavy on Giants newsletter here!
Here’s how it went down (emphasis added):
CBS Sports: How different does it feel preparing for the season now that A.J. Brown is an Eagle alongside you, DeVonta Smith, Dallas Goedert, and the rest of the offense?
Sanders: Oh man. We all feel like we’re on an all-star team, so we feel great. We feel unstoppable, I’m not gonna lie. The vibes are great, always have been. Nick Sirianni is doing a great job just keeping the vibes right, the chemistry is good. We compete a lot in practice. But we’ve gotta see. It’s gonna come down to camp, taking it one day at a time … putting everything together.
The quote immediately made the rounds on social media.
What? How?
Sanders’ quote is extremely similar to the ill-fated quote former Eagles quarterback Vince Young delivered before the 2011 season, when he infamously labeled Philly a “Dream Team.”
“Dream Team,” Young said over a decade ago, via USA Today. “From Nnamdi [Asomugha] to [Dominique Rodgers-] Cromartie, to Jason [Babin] to myself, I know they are going to do some more things. … It’s just beautiful to see where we’re trying to go.”
Young’s quote did not age well. The Eagles went 8-8 that season and missed the playoffs. A year later, they bottomed out at 4-12 and head coach Andy Reid was fired.
Adding insult to injury, the Giants won the NFC East in 2011 and went on to hoist the Lombardi Trophy in Super Bowl XLVI. New York has only been back to the playoffs once since then, but maybe Sanders’ quote is foreshadowing another dose of cosmic justice in the near future.
Miles Sanders May Need a History Lesson
You can’t really expect Miles Sanders to remember Vince Young’s “Dream Team” quote (he was only 14 years old when it happened), but he should be able to remember last year. Out of the four players mentioned in the original question from CBS Sports — Sanders, A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith and Dallas Goedert — none of them even made the Pro Bowl last season.
Brown, in fact, is the only one who has ever been to a Pro Bowl and it came after the 2020 season, when he was still with the Titans. He is currently coming off a season in which he set career-low watermarks for receiving yards (869) and receiving touchdowns (5).
Goedert is a solid tight end, but he’s never made a Pro Bowl through four NFL seasons. Smith is an up-and-coming receiver, too, but he had less than 1,000 receiving yards as a rookie last year.
Sanders, for his part, has never eclipsed 1,000 yards on the ground and scored a grand total of zero touchdowns last season. The Eagles finished 9-8 in 2021 and only made the playoffs as a result of the NFL expanding the postseason field to 14 teams.
Even the Giants Beat the Eagles Last Year
The Giants only won four games last year, and one of them was a 13-7 victory over the Eagles in Week 12. In that game, Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts completed just 14 of his 31 pass attempts (45.2%) for 129 yards and three interceptions against a defense that ranked squarely in the bottom half of the NFL. Daniel Jones, on the other hand, went 19-for-30 with 202 yards and a touchdown.
The Eagles did get their revenge when he Giants visited Lincoln Financial Field a few weeks later, but that was after Jones was lost for the season due to injury. Mike Glennon and Jake Fromm each threw an interception, as New York’s backup quarterbacks combined for an average of 2.7 yards per pass attempt in the 34-10 loss.