DeMarco Murray could’ve gone back to Dallas. He could’ve made more money somewhere else. He chose the Eagles for a very specific reason.
"I felt this was a great opportunity for us to win a Super Bowl at the end of the day,” Murray said Thursday shortly after signing a five-year deal reportedly worth $42 million to play for his former team’s division rivals (see story).
The NFL’s reigning rushing champion joined another newcomer, former Chargers Pro Bowl halfback Ryan Mathews, to form the next 1-2 punch in Chip Kelly’s offensive backfield.
Murray, a two-time Pro Bowler and last year’s Offensive Player of the Year, led the NFL last season in carries, rushing yards and rushing touchdowns.
Mathews, a former first-round pick, has exceeded 1,000 yards twice in his five seasons in San Diego and made the Pro Bowl once (more on Mathews here).
They signed contracts that total more than $53 million, big money for an NFL franchise in this passing era, but Kelly made it clear that he’s still a run-first head coach, even after trading LeSean McCoy last week to Buffalo.
“I don’t think we extended ourselves financially to be honest with you,” he said. “You’ve got to run the football in this league. That’s what we believe in. That’s what I’ve always believed in.
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“We lost a very talented running back and in making that decision and losing LeSean is [the question], ‘How do you replace someone of that caliber?’ And that’s what we did.”
Murray and the Cowboys went two rounds deep into the playoffs last year, and Murray said Dallas always has “a special place” in his heart. He thanked Jerry Jones and the Cowboys family for picking him in the third round out of Oklahoma in 2011 and giving him the chance to be the franchise halfback.
But he switched sides of the fierce rivalry for a better offer — though not the best one — and for a rare opportunity.
He thinks the Eagles can win big.
“I felt that this was a great opportunity for me to win a Super Bowl, at the end of the day,” he said. “It wasn’t about financial security or anything like that. Obviously, you want something that you deserve and that’s respectful. I felt that those two things were important to me and I was able to accomplish that here.”
Do the Eagles have better championship potential than the team he just left behind?
“I think the Eagles have a great chance to win the Super Bowl. And it’s not easy,” he said. “I know there’s a lot of work that has to be done. It’s easy to sit up here and say that, but we have to go to work.”
Once he boarded the private jet from Dallas to Philadelphia on Wednesday, Murray knew he’d wouldn’t be going back to Dallas as a Cowboy.
Or anywhere else.
“I was confident [in signing with the Eagles]. It definitely wasn’t the biggest contract, but it was something about this organization, about this team that caught my eye,” he said. “And I felt that it was a great chance to win here and that’s what you want.
“You want to be in a place that has great fans, you want to be in a place that has a great coach in Chip Kelly and you want to be in a place where you have a chance to win and be successful.”