After going aisle to aisle, seat to seat, and giving everybody assembled inside the Eagles' South Philly training headquarters a bear hug, Brandon Graham cracked a joke: “I want to thank everybody for coming out today to hear me tell ya’ll I’m coming back for another year.”
He was kidding. Or was he?
Graham retired that day, on March 18, but on Wednesday, less than a month later, he went on Up And Adams With Kay Adams’ show on YouTube and said he was “90 percent retired.”
That was his response when Adams asked: “How retired are you?” She followed up by asking, “What's the 10 (percent)?”
Graham said it depends on his training as to whether he would potentially entertain a return. He has returned to training after retearing his triceps muscle in Super Bowl LIX, which was the same triceps he had torn on Nov. 24. The injury shut him down until he played 13 snaps in the Eagles’ 40-22 win over the Kansas City Chiefs in New Orleans.
“The ten (percent) is how much I want to continue to train the way I’m training,” he said. “I’m trying to look good and training the way you train for a game is different, but I haven’t really changed that, yet.
“I just want to go out there and speed it up to where I want to look good and make sure that I’m staying fit and while I’m still rehabbing my arm making sure that when I do retire I stay in the habit of that because a lot of guys tell me when they leave you gotta make sure you stay in the habit of working out.”
Now, this could mean Graham has more bullrush in him, one of his moves he used to beat offensive linemen for 15 years with the Eagles, or it could just be bull(bleep).
“I got a new motivation,” he said, “because if I want to look good or be on TV, I’ll be wearing my suit, so I have to be looking good, and I want to be healthy for my kids…so that 10 percent is, I doubt it. I try to be a man of my word. I don’t want to play that back-and-forth stuff. I’m just gonna have to accept it and just move on and get ready for what’s next because I feel I’m gonna make the next thing great.”
So, it sounds like BG was just having some fun, but that 10 percent could be a foothold for defensive coordinator Vic Fangio, who was at a recent Phillies game and was interviewed by NBCSPhilly’s John Clark.
Fangio said he watched cutups from Graham’s 2024 film and told Clark. “Maybe we have to talk BG into coming back out of retirement.”
