Brandon Graham announced his retirement on Tuesday, bringing his farewell tour and his 15-year career in Philadelphia to an official close.
He’s hanging up his cleats as an all-time fan favorite, as the longest-tenured Eagle ever, as one of the most accomplished Eagles ever, and as one of the very select few who can say they’ve won the Super Bowl in Philadelphia not once, but twice.
But now it’s on to the next chapter, though Graham said during his retirement press conference on Tuesday that he isn’t quite sure what that looks like yet.
He’ll be talking to Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie about it soon, the 36-year-old said, and added that whatever his next role is, he hopes that it’ll keep him around the team to help out at practice…and to keep his signature brand of trash talk flowing in some way, either through himself or the Eagles’ next generation of pass rusher in Nolan Smith and Jalyx Hunt.
“I’ll say I wanna sit down and talk to Mr. Lurie, have some dinner with him, and so we gonna do that and figure out what I could do to be a part of what’s goin’ on,” Graham said. “Because I feel like, as you know, we got some good stuff brewin’ right now, and I want to make sure that I can be a help in whatever it is that I do.
“Then, of course, I want to be creative – I ain’t gotta be all in one basket, have everything all in one – but just kinda, you know, move around. But I don’t want to just cold turkey leaving the game, because I love it. I love just the intensity of it. I love just…
“Man, now I can send my goons out for ’em,” Graham continued about the prospect of relaying his trash talk, with a huge grin on his face. “Now I got a little different lingo I’m gonna say to these guys on the field, because of course, I gotta talk my stuff. I can’t do nothin’ about it, but I can send Nolan out there to go do it.”
Yeah, if there’s anything Graham’s really going to miss in retirement, it’s all the talk on the field – hours of mic’d up footage that has piled up over the years backs that up.
Bu Graham will find a way. He has his whole playing career, and won’t suddenly stop now that it’s over.
“I’ma miss it, but I’ma do it in practice, too,” Graham said, going on to hint at a potential job working alongside Eagles defensive ends coach Jeremiah Washburn. “I’ma be a part of something that they got goin’ on where I can come in and, even if I’m just coming to practice, doing something to help Wash – doing something…”
It’s just figuring out what that something will be, which will get sorted out in time.
And if and when, if it has Graham back at NovaCare as soon as this summer for training camp…
“I’ma always tell the O-linemen what I would’ve did if I was still out there.” he said with a laugh.
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