Chad Lewis walked onto the Lincoln Financial Field grass and led nearly 70,000 Philadelphia Eagles fans in a chant during the first break of the NFC championship game. Considering the Minnesota Vikings had just scored a touchdown on their opening drive, the scripted moment was either poorly or perfectly timed.
The scoreboard said Lewis’ cheerleading worked wonderfully: Philadelphia 38, Minnesota 0, over the game’s last 55 minutes and 14 seconds.
The Eagles are back in the Super Bowl for the first time in 13 years, evoking the former BYU star’s memories of what he labels the “best/worst day of my life.” In January 2005, his two touchdown receptions helped the Eagles beat Atlanta in the NFC title game. The last catch effectively ended his career.
So as he witnessed the Eagles’ latest advancement to a Super Bowl, the emotions of that long-ago day hit Lewis: the pain, the anger, the unfairness of it all, recognizing that his team would be playing without him.
Sorry, wrong guy.
“To this day, I’ve never had any bitterness or disappointment,” said Lewis, now a BYU associate athletic director.
Lewis was the only one who knew exactly what happened to him in that moment. Sitting in the end zone, cradling the football after scoring a clinching touchdown, he realized he had broken his foot. The Eagles’ season would continue, but his season was over, due to a Lisfranc injury.
Yet those feelings of what he would be missing were overwhelmed by his sense of what the Eagles had done, at last reaching the Super Bowl after losing in the NFC championship each of the previous three seasons. “That’s what made that victory so great,” he said. “We had been through a lot. We had been so close.”
The breakthrough for coach Andy Reid (another former BYU player) and ex-Cougar running back Reno Mahe, a special-teams star that season, sent the Eagles into the Super Bowl vs. New England, just like Sunday’s matchup in Minneapolis. Lewis loved being part of this month’s celebration, watching coach Doug Pederson — a Reid protégé and Lewis’ former teammate as a backup quarterback for the Eagles — hold the team together after a season-ending injury to QB Carson Wentz in December.
That’s what struck Lewis, in his return to Philly. “The amount of work that goes into a season, from July to January,” he said. “The challenges that you have to overcome as a team. Everything that it takes to get there, to have things go your way.”
It happened, finally, for Lewis’ Eagles in January 2005. They would lose to New England in the Super Bowl, as he watched from a wheelchair on the sideline in Jacksonville, Fla. Yet he’ll forever treasure the achievement of getting there. Not being able to play, on the biggest stage of his career? “That’s just part of the game,” he said. “No tears, no crying … just grateful.”
Keith Johnson | The Salt Lake Tribune Former professional golfer Billy Casper, left, talks to former BYU football player Chad Lewis before Casper being inducted into the Utah Sports Hall of Fame, Oct. 15, 2013, in Salt Lake City. Lewis' wife, Michelle Fellows Lewis, a former BYU volleyball player, was inducted the same year along with former University of Utah and Weber State University football coach Ron McBride, former Utah football player Marv Fleming and former BYU quarterback Jim McMahon.
Well, that’s Lewis for you. “You could say a hundred negative things and he’ll think of a hundred positive things,” teammate Mike Bartrum said during that Super Bowl week. “I know it’s eating him up inside. He won’t let you know it, though. I’m just so sad he can’t play in the game. He deserves it more than anybody.”
With a 24-21 victory in Jacksonville, New England coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady claimed their third championship in four years. Thirteen years later, they’ll target a sixth title in their eighth Super Bowl appearance.
Lewis recovered sufficiently to play in the second half of the 2005 season as a tight end for the Eagles, before retiring at age 34. Reid took the Eagles to another NFC championship game four years later, but they lost at Arizona.
The Eagles’ next chance to play for the conference title came this month in Philly, explaining why the franchise brought back Lewis and his close friend, kicker David Akers, from the last Super Bowl team. The strategy worked. The good vibes carried over. And Lewis enjoyed every bit of it — even knowing that, as usual, he wouldn’t be playing for the Eagles in the Super Bowl.
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