Bench pressing, basketball tournaments, grill masters, and more: Inside the tailgates for the Eagles’ home opener

Just 24 hours ago, Lincoln Financial Field was transformed into Beaver Stadium East as a sea of blue and white infiltrated the stadium for Penn State’s 27-9 win over Temple. But Sunday morning felt different.

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Familiar midnight green and black jerseys covered the asphalt of the tailgating lots, DJs set up in front of green RVs, Eagles chants could be heard over music, and brave Washington fans scattered throughout the lots as they prepared to watch the Commanders take on the Eagles in their season opener.

“I bleed green, cut me, it’ll be green paint everywhere,” said Philly native Teddy Warren. “This is my time of year. I do nothing but this right here. The whole year [goes] by, we do nothing. Soon as Eagles football starts, everything is shut down. I don’t even go on vacation. This is vacation.”

From elevated grill dishes to recreational sports in the parking lots, here’s everything you missed from the Eagles’ home opener tailgates:

Gray clouds covered the South Philadelphia sports complex, light rain hit the already soaked pavement of the parking lots, and puddles formed along the curbs. But that wasn’t stopping fans from the home opener festivities.

“Doesn’t matter the weather, we’re going to be here,” said 38-year-old Plymouth Meeting native Jordan Anthony.

Anthony and Anthony Fanelli, 35, arrived at the tailgating lots at 7:30 a.m. They patiently waited for kickoff while passing a football.

“Last year, we were at both the snow games,” Fanelli said. “Freezing weather, but it don’t matter. We’re out here bleeding green. That’s what we do.”

Anthony and Fanelli weren’t the only fans unaffected by the rain. Warren has been tailgating Eagles games for 18 years, and he’s seen it all, including in 2010 when a game against the Minnesota Vikings was rescheduled because of an unexpected blizzard.

“Rain, snow, sleet, or shine, we out here,” Warren said. “I was out here when we was supposed to play Minnesota. Guys out here with snowblowers. That’s all. They bringing snowblowers just for that. Snow was up to the knees. I was out here in my tank top, cooking, deep frying.”

By 1 p.m., the gray skies had faded and the sun peeked out, giving fans the perfect tailgate weather three hours before kickoff.

Eagles fans had the perfect recipe for success: beer (lots of it), water (less of it), and a basketball net attached to an arcade bus and bench press with 135 pounds attached to the bar.

In Lot D, the basketball hoop was on the back of Alex’s Arcade Bus, which has been in operation for a year. It features six televisions with multiple gaming consoles, including PlayStations and a Wii.

“As you can see, it’s a full-time job,” said West Philly native Marcell Porter. “It takes at least three of us to run it and that’s just the basketball court. Not even counting the Xbox and PlayStations. When we put those on, we can’t get the kids off it.”

Porter is an auto body technician and did all the infrastructure for the bus within two months. The bus, decorated with gaming characters like Chun Li, Mario, and Sonic, is used for kids’ birthday parties, but tailgates are among their driving forces to attract new customers.

“This is where we get most of our customers, most of our people,” Porter said. “Once people see our bus, they play basketball, they look at our QR code, and send us pictures.”

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But if basketball wasn’t your thing, fans could make the long walk over to M Lot to The People’s Bench to see how many 135-pound reps they could get out pregame.

William Schaeffer, Dalton Kristiniak, and Craig Michelbacher — the creators behind the popular social media account The People’s Bench — returned to the tailgating lots after getting a lot of attention during the playoffs.

Philly native Daryus Watson, 26, was tempted by the bench and got an extra nudge from Remiah Hughes.

“I know that he’s able to do it,” Hughes said. “He be helping me. We be in the gym sometimes, and I know he can definitely do it. And I wanted him to be up on the board.”

Watson needed 44 reps to make it onto the leaderboard, but he finished with 40.

“It was a great experience,” Watson said. “I haven’t benched in a long time. Ended up getting to 40, so I’m happy with that. I wanted to get on the board, but I didn’t have enough in the tank.”

Derrick Simmons tossed his towel over his shoulder and peered inside his large smoker trailer to check on the ribs, chicken, hot dogs, and sausages he had been prepping before the game.

“This is just my pit,” Simmons said. “We cook anything on this jawn, black bear that we get from Merry Hill, North Carolina, deer, we throw whatever on this joint. We mess around with that farm-raised catfish too.”

The Philly native has family ties to North Carolina. He decided to purchase the smoker about 10 years ago, following requests from his family to host a number of family cookouts.

“We just out here celebrating the Birds,” Simmons said. “We going to beat down on Washington. Get the food, get the eats. And you got to eat. The folks out here, you haven’t heard it from me, but they like to drink. So you got to feed it. You got to feed it. You got to start out by eating.”

And Simmons wasn’t the only one throwing down in the tailgating lots. Dylan Marck was standing behind his grill at his usual spot in M Lot, cooking Wagyu New York strips and smoked pecan rosemary chicken. Marck, a self-taught chef, has been serving high-end cuisines such as lobster, pressed duck, steak — and even camel — at Philly tailgates since 2022. And this season, he already has a few new ideas in the works.

“The one thing I’m kind of interested in doing is pizza,” Marck said. “But the temperature has to be right. The dough is very finicky, and it’s very sensitive. So if we hit a nice window where it’s like 70 degrees, not too hot, not too humid, we’re going to bring a pizza oven out and do pizza.”

A sign that read “Happy 40th birthday, Sam” hung from a tent in D Lot, where Sam Bartoshesky and Bladen Potter, 28, sat ahead of the game. Both made the trip from Dewey Beach on Friday to spend the weekend in Philly for Bartoshesky’s 40th birthday.

“Forty is a tough thing to turn,” Bartoshesky said. “It’s just a different stage in life. But the one thing I really wanted to do is just be in my favorite city and just have all of this energy around me. It’s so fun, and you get all different walks of life here, but everybody comes together for one thing, and that’s to celebrate the Eagles.”

The city has even won over Potter, who grew up on the outside of Washington rooting for its football team. She also went to high school with Commanders receiver Stefon Diggs. But that connection still isn’t enough to keep her from making the switch to the Birds bandwagon.

“I have recently fallen in love with the city of Philly,” Potter said. “I just love camaraderie and community. … I’m finding myself falling more into that community. So I don’t have a jersey or anything yet. But I could see myself soon trading allegiances, as horrible as that may be to the Commanders, I’m so sorry.”

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