And so we’ve come to the biggest sporting day of the year, the Super Bowl. And now that we have our Super Bowl LII matchup settled, it’s time to take a look back at a gallery covering just some of this program history between the New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles. Let’s go!
The very first meeting between the Patriots and Eagles occurred during the 1968 preseason, as part of an exhibition series between the AFL and NFL. Philly edged Boston, 22-20, at Harvard Stadium. This cover was drawn by the great Phil Bissell and was one of several Patriots games played as a fundraiser for a charity named after Richard Cushing, then Catholic Archbishop of Boston.
The first regular season meeting between the Eagles and Patriots took place during Week 8 of the 1973 season. It was another close win for the Eagles, 24-23, this time at Veterans Stadium. The NFL had already moved to more standardized cover designs by then, and this excellent painting of O.J. Simpson featured on several other covers as well.
Here’s the first of two programs from 1977, this one from the preseason. As was typical for many years, this preseason program featured the new Hall of Fame class. This was also played at Veterans Stadium.
In the 1977 regular season matchup New England was the winner, 14-6. You can see that the NFL went with a pretty generic cover for this one.
Here’s another preseason cover, this time from a 1998 game at Foxboro Stadium. Patriots linebacker Chris Slade, who spent the first eight of his nine NFL seasons in New England, is featured.
This preseason cover from 2003 features QB Donovan McNabb, and just happens to be from the first-ever Eagles game played at Lincoln Financial Field, aka The Linc.
Of course new Patriots/Eagles gallery is complete with the first Super Bowl between the two, Super Bowl XXXIX. Fans of both teams know how this ended. Cover-wise, this is typical of modern-day Super Bowl covers in that it’s totally professional and thoroughly antiseptic.
Finally we come down to the latest cover entry, Super Bowl LII in Minnesota. I like this one a lot more than the cover for SB XXXIX, but I sure do miss the days of hand-painted covers.