Jay Sorgi
Philadelphia turns into euphoria when the Eagles win the ultimate prize, and rightfully so. We often need time, however, to take in the meaning of such grand moments, particularly to find reflections and lessons of faith that are greater than triumphs on a scoreboard.
Sixty-five years gives plenty of time for a different spotlight upon a game played Dec. 26, 1960 at historic Franklin Field. The Philadelphia Eagles not only put up more points than Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers in the 1960 NFL Championship Game, but the way they won it — and some of the storylines and characters involved — showcases God’s presence beyond just a championship victory.
The Second Day of Christmas
The National Football League didn’t treat Christmas as a day to capture massive TV audiences like it does in 2025. The league didn’t put a Christmas Day game on the schedule until 1971. It always moved games off one of the holiest days of the year so that families could focus on worshiping the newborn Savior and enjoying time together with loved ones.
The league moved the NFL Championship Game from Christmas, which fell on a Sunday that year, to high noon the following day. More than 67,000 fans decked the halls of the world’s first permanent double-decker stadium, overflowing Franklin Field to the point where fans sat on temporary seats placed on the legendary Penn Relays track.
Eagles fans at home couldn’t watch the game on television. NFL rules at the time did not allow the TV broadcast of any home game within 75 miles of the stadium.
It meant fans had the choice of listening to radio broadcasts of the game by two graduates of St. Joseph’s University and archdiocesan high schools: Roman Catholic alum Bill Campbell on the Eagles Radio Network or Northeast Catholic grad Jack Whitaker on NBC Radio.
Campbell rightfully earned a beloved status in Philadelphia sports lore, but Whitaker in particular owned a way with words and a pathway to using them in subtly showcasing St. Ignatius’ call for “finding God in all things.” Whitaker told a human story that could move the heart of someone who didn’t know a football from a bocce ball.
Touchdown Tommy: Rooted in Faith
Fans could easily see God’s handiwork in an Eagles player who made a massive play in the game’s second quarter. He was one of the smallest yet toughest wide receivers of his era, Tommy McDonald.
The native Oklahoman with a childlike enthusiasm accomplished a rarity by getting open past the second-ranked Packers defense for fellow future Hall of Fame quarterback Norm Van Brocklin to hit him with a touchdown bomb in the snowy corner of Franklin Field’s southeast end zone to give Philadelphia a 7-6 lead.
McDonald eventually settled in the Philadelphia area and became a weekly fixture in the pews at Mother of Divine Providence Parish in King of Prussia.
“The school would call him for ‘show and tell’ days and he would end up spending the whole day there with the kids,” his son Chris said.
“He always had two messages when speaking to groups,” Chris McDonald added. “‘One, keep God in your life. Two, be strong with the big guy upstairs,’ and Dad would point upward.”
His score produced the first of two comebacks the Eagles would create that day against a Packers squad led by devout Catholic Vince Lombardi, one on the cusp of a dynasty. Green Bay was set to begin that reign after taking a 13-10 fourth-quarter lead.
The Cardiac Birds
There was something about this Eagles team in times of trouble that could remind people of the words in Exodus, “Do not fear! Stand your ground and see the victory the Lord will win for you today.”
Five of their 10 regular-season wins in 1960 were by a one-score margin. Six of their 10 regular-season triumphs came with comebacks, five of them in the fourth quarter. They twice came back from three-score deficits to produce victory.
Coach Buck Shaw’s squad was a walking personification of the words of Saint Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, “We are afflicted in every way, but not constrained; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”
You can fill in the blanks with stories of the Holy Family, other Biblical characters and so many different saints’ lives that embody the overcoming of incredible odds to find a greater victory.
The Eagles did just that with a Main Line native, running back Ted Dean. He ran the ensuing kickoff back 58 yards, then pounded in a five-yard touchdown run that delivered Philadelphia a 17-13 lead.
Lombardi’s Packers, with six Hall of Famers on offense, drove against both the Eagles’ defense and the ticking late-game clock.
The ultimate personification of those Eagles, and perhaps the most beloved Bird this side of Jason Kelce, finished the Packers off.
Chuck ‘Concrete Charlie’ Bednarik Had a Heart of Gold
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania’s own Eagles center and linebacker Chuck Bednarik devoted himself to praying a daily Rosary to help him through the horrors of World War II, twice surviving plane crashes during his military service. He regularly lent support to Assumption B.V.M. Parish’s efforts to help center city Philadelphia’s unhoused people.
“He would stop by every so often, and he would say, ‘I’m just stopping in to say hello, Sister,’” said Father David Machain, who is now 100 years old and served the parish at the time. “He handed her $100 bills. He did that periodically, and I don’t know that anybody knew about it.”
Bednarik, generous with quiet compassion off the field, was publicly generous with concrete-like tackles on it. The future Hall of Famer played 59 minutes of that championship game, the last seconds of which involved tackling and pinning down roughhouse fullback Jim Taylor at the Eagles’ nine yard line until the legendary clock in the northwest end zone of Franklin Field read zero.
Bednarik and most of the other 67,000-plus in Franklin Field leaped with exuberance in the afternoon shadows as the Birds celebrated the second day of Christmas with a 17-13 championship victory, the last until the Eagles’ Super Bowl LII triumph in February 2018.
The only postseason game that Vince Lombardi ever lost, however, should remind us to think of things beyond box scores where the Birds conquer all comers.
That incredible win should give us pause to find the hidden gifts on the days of Christmas, on Franklin and other fields, in Eagles games, in the comebacks of our lives, in warrior-like figures like Bednarik who humbly give through their faith without fanfare.
God’s all over the Kelly green, and everywhere else, if you look closely enough.
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