Filed under: Eagles, NFC East

In November 1978, I sat in the upper deck of Franklin Field, cold and miserable as snow began to fall. My Penn Quakers had just blown a 17-3 fourth-quarter lead and had to settle for a 17-17 tie with Yale on two touchdown catches by Bulldogs tight end John Spagnola. My buddies, Rob Finkel and Scott Bruskin, couldn’t get me to budge. Maybe I somehow knew what was coming. Penn, 7-7 before then during my college career, would plummet to 1-21 during the rest of my time on campus.

What brought that memory back was the Eagles‘ signing Monday of Nate Lawrie, a tight end from Yale. You see, two years after ruining my day, Spagnola was back in Philadelphia, playing for the Eagles as they advanced to their first Super Bowl. And now, Gang Green has another tight end from that school in New Haven.

Lawrie isn’t some rookie free agent either. A sixth-round pick by Tampa Bay in 2004, the 6-foot-6, 255-pound Lawrie has bounced from the Bucs to the Saints to the Bengals while playing in 26 games the past six seasons. And Lawrie was on the Eagles’ practice squad for the first two weeks of 2004, the only season other than Spagnola’s 1980 campaign in which they finished in the Super Bowl.