History of the Philadelphia Eagles

The Philadelphia Eagles were founded in 1933 as a replacement for the bankrupt Frankford Yellow Jackets.
The Eagles have appeared in the playoffs 29 times, won 16 division titles (12 in the NFC East), appeared in four pre-merger NFL Championship Games, winning three of them (1948, 1949, and 1960), and appeared in four Super Bowls, winning Super Bowl LII at the end of the 2017 season.
The Eagles are owned by Jeffrey Lurie, who bought the team from previous owner Norman Braman for $195 million on May 6, 1994.
In 2017, Forbes valued the club at $2.65 billion, ranking them 10th among NFL teams in value.
The team has had an intense rivalry with the New York Giants. It was ranked by NFL Network as the number one rivalry of all time, Sports Illustrated ranks it as the fourth-best rivalry in the NFL,[7] and according to ESPN, it is one of the fiercest and most well-known rivalries in the American football community.
The Philadelphia Eagles were founded in 1933 as an expansion team.
The team struggled in its early years, never winning more than four games.
In 1935, Bell proposed an annual college draft to equalize talent across the league.
The draft was a revolutionary concept in professional sports.
Between 1927 (when the NFL changed from a sprawling Midwestern-based association to a narrower, major-market league) and 1934, a triopoly of three teams (the Chicago Bears, New York Giants, and Green Bay Packers) had won all but one title.
By 1936, the club had suffered significant financial losses and was sold through a public auction.
Bert Bell was the only bidder and became the sole owner of the team.
Wray refused a reduction in his salary and left the team.
Bell assumed the head coaching position and led the team to a record of 1–11, for last place in the league.
In 1940, Bell balked at a 66% rent increase plus 10% of the gate receipts proposed by the city for using the stadium and signed a lease for Shibe Park.
The Eagles would also be able to play night games as Shibe Park had installed lights the year before.
In the 1941 season, the Eagles played their home opener at Municipal Stadium, but then moved to Shibe Park.
To accommodate football at Shibe Park during the winter, management set up stands in right field, parallel to 20th Street.
In December 1940, Bell conciliated the sale of Art Rooney's Steelers to Alexis Thompson.
In a series of events known as the Pennsylvania Polka, Rooney and Bell exchanged their entire Eagles roster and their territorial rights in Philadelphia to Thompson for his entire Steelers roster and his rights in Pittsburgh.
Ostensibly, Rooney had provided assistance to Bell by rewarding him with a 20% commission on the sale of the Steelers.
Bell became the Steelers' head coach and Rooney became general manager.
Greasy Neale years (1941–1950)
After assuming ownership, Thompson promptly hired Earle "Greasy" Neale as the team's head coach.
During the first years under Neale, the team continued to struggle and finished the 1941 season with a 2–8–1 record.
In 1943, when manpower shortages stemming from World War II made it impossible to fill the roster, the team merged with the Steelers forming the "Phil-Pitt Eagles", known as the Steagles.
Greasy Neale coached the team along with Steelers head coach Walt Kiesling.
The team finished the season with a 5–4–1 record.
The merger, never intended as a permanent arrangement, was dissolved at the end of the season.
In 1944, led by head coach Greasy Neale and running back Steve Van Buren, the Eagles had their first winning season in team history.
The team returned to the NFL Championship game for the third consecutive year.
The Eagles were favored by a touchdown,[28][29][30] and won 14–0 for their second consecutive title-game shutout.
Chuck Bednarik was selected as the first overall pick in the 1949 NFL Draft.
An All-American lineman/linebacker from the University of Pennsylvania, Bednarik would go on to become one of the greatest and most beloved players in Eagles history.
With the new decade came another turn in team fortunes.
In 1950, the Eagles opened the season against AAFC champion Cleveland Browns, who (along with two other AAFC franchises) had just joined the NFL.
The Eagles won the game 44–0.
The Eagles were one of the most successful teams in the NFL in the 1940s, but they struggled in the 1950s.
In 1958, the team hired Buck Shaw as head coach and acquired quarterback Norm Van Brocklin in a trade with the Los Angeles Rams.
During the 1959 season, the team showed flashes of talent, and finished in second place in the Eastern Division.
Former Eagles owner and co-founder Bert Bell, who at the time was the commissioner of the NFL, attended a game on October 11 at Franklin Field, when the Eagles faced the Pittsburgh Steelers, a team whom Bell also used to own. Bell refused the box seats that the Eagles had reserved for him and purchased his own tickets to sit with the fans.
On November 20, 1960, at Yankee Stadium in The Bronx, Bednarik launched a tackle against New York Giants' running back Frank Gifford, which has come to be known as The Hit, that is routinely ranked as one of the hardest and most vicious hits in NFL history.
With the game tied 10 to 10 in the fourth quarter, Gifford caught a short pass over the middle and was immediately hit by Bednarik with a clothes line tackle so hard that it dropped Gifford to the ground unconscious.
Gifford was removed from the field on stretcher and transported to a local hospital by ambulance, where he remained for ten days. Gifford was diagnosed with a deep concussion that resulted in his retirement from the game for 18 months.
On the 100th anniversary of the NFL's founding, the NFL ranked Bednarik's tackle the 44th greatest play in league history.
On December 26, 1960, one of the coldest days in recorded Philadelphia history, the Eagles faced Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers in the NFL Championship game and dealt the formidable Lombardi the sole championship game loss of his storied career. Bednarik lined up at center on offense and at linebacker on defense.
Fittingly, the game ended as Bednarik tackled a struggling Jim Taylor and refused to allow him to stand until the last seconds had ticked away.