Jeffrey Lurie leans back in his chair and tries to find a balance in what he wants to say. He’s eager to share the fond memories but knows he has to also include the heartbreaking ones. Peter has been a great brother, Lurie insists. Warm, loving, funny. But yes, there have been challenges and frustrations associated with his autism.
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Lurie has made promises to his family and isn’t sure just how much he should share.
“We keep it pretty private,” he tells The Athletic. “My mother always wants me to keep him out of things.”
Growing up, Lurie and Peter bonded over swimming and music. Peter could not communicate verbally so the family learned to read his eyes and expressions. But that process had its limits. Lurie’s eyes light up as he recalls how they’d spend hours in the pool or the ocean listening to Bob Dylan and The Beatles. Show tunes, too, from “Fiddler on the Roof” to “My Fair Lady.”
“He was able to note every tune of any song ever listened to,” Lurie says with pride. “He’s very eclectic. Similar to me.”
It’s 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, May 18. Lurie is in his personal dressing room at Lincoln Financial Field. He says he doesn’t use the room much — only on rare occasions when he needs to change at the stadium. There’s a black couch with cupholders that faces a flat-screen TV. On the right, a wall-sized photograph of Lurie holding up the Lombardi Trophy surrounded by a sea of children wearing Eagles Autism Challenge shirts. It was taken on the field during Week 1 last season as the organization celebrated its first Super Bowl title.
Jeffrey Lurie raises the Lombardi Trophy before the Eagles’ 2018 season opener in Philadelphia. (Bill Streicher / USA Today)
Lurie has just completed the sensory walk as part of the second annual Eagles Autism Challenge, a one-day bike ride and 5K that begins and ends at the stadium. So far this year, the event has raised $3.4 million for autism research programs. And the cause is personal, even though Lurie struggles with whether he wants to tell that story.
Peter is three years younger than Lurie. They grew up together in West Newton, Mass. Lurie remembers trying at a young age to understand why his brother was different from him and his younger sister, Cathy. In a memory from his early teens, Lurie recalls being in a hotel elevator with Peter as another guest stepped on with a dog. Peter was not prone to tantrums, but he was terrified of dogs.
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“To see someone so terror-stricken, we rushed out at the next floor,” says Lurie. “Just horribly terror-stricken. That was a low point to see that.
“It was and is a huge puzzle, like why? Why? And there were things that he was extraordinary at and others that we just didn’t even know what he would understand because he couldn’t feed it back to us. We couldn’t really understand it. So, it was so frustrating and puzzling and heartbreaking, and yet there was so much positive about my brother.”
Everything changed when Peter was in his late 30s. Lurie was living in Los Angeles at the time and got a call from his mother. Peter had started communicating his thoughts and feelings by typing them out on a keyboard. Lurie flew back east to see for himself. It was shocking in a wonderful way, Lurie says. They stayed up all night conversing. Peter told their mom he loved her. He told Jeffrey he loved him. Their father had died when Lurie was 9. Peter opened up about not being able to mourn properly. At the time, he had been on his way to an autism center at the University of Chicago and didn’t get to go through the different stages of grief with the family.
“Now you could have pretty high-level conversations with him and emotionally filled conversations with him,” says Lurie.
“It just became very obvious that all these years, he may have been quiet, he may have been in the corner at school and things like that, but he took it all in and he understood everything his entire life. It’s pretty incredible.”
As Lurie speaks, he pulls back, remembering the promise he made to his mother to not reveal too much. He doesn’t want to say where Peter currently lives but explains that his brother likes to paint and work out and goes to concerts and movies. Peter lives a full life, Lurie says. It’s one that has inspired him to use his organization and his platform for autism advocacy. Lurie has ambitious plans to grow the Eagles Autism Challenge and believes Philadelphia can become a leader in autism research.
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“There’s a lot of people like my brother,” he says. “The puzzle is there. The opportunity to unlock it in other ways is there.”
Squad.#EaglesAutismChallenge pic.twitter.com/qUgPjUe5dG
— Philadelphia Eagles (@Eagles) May 18, 2019
It’s 12:03 p.m. on Sunday, May 19. After the Eagles Autism Challenge, Lurie flew to Worcester, Mass., to deliver the commencement address at his alma mater, Clark University. On a gray, cloudy day, moms and dads duck into Atwood Hall to avoid the rain before the ceremony begins.
Lurie says he doesn’t get nervous when talking football or addressing the media. But this is a different audience. As university president David Angel introduces Lurie, he references the Super Bowl victory over the New England Patriots. The crowd reacts with a mix of cheers and boos.
“Six-time champions!” yells one middle-aged woman in a thick New England accent who is seated a few rows in front of Lurie’s wife, Tina.
Lurie begins by promising to keep the speech short and jokes that he hopes to offer the students something they’ll remember — at least until that night’s “Game of Thrones” finale. That line plays well.
It’s been 46 years since Lurie roamed the Clark campus as a student. His friend and former roommate Steve Bahn says Lurie was sports-obsessed back then. They’d watch football games in Lurie’s dorm room and plan road trips around various sporting events. Bahn even remembers Lurie coming up with his own mock drafts.
“It was no surprise to me when he told me that he bought the Eagles,” says Bahn. “It just seemed like a natural thing, something that he had always trained for his entire life. It just made sense. … That’s what he loved to do. He loved sports. But it wasn’t his only thing. This is not a one-dimensional guy. He sees the world in very big views.”
Lurie tells the graduates that he used to go to a lot of Grateful Dead concerts in college and that he loved the Boston Bruins and Boston Celtics as a kid. He then draws parallels between what’s happening in the world now and what it was like when he attended Clark.
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“By the time I was sitting right where you are at my graduation in the spring of 1973, the country was riveted by the Senate Watergate hearings into a president who put journalists at the top of his enemies list and defied congressional subpoenas investigating obstruction of justice,” he says.
“I know, imagine that.”
Lurie pauses, and the crowd cheers for seven seconds before allowing him to resume.
Later, asked about the contents of the speech, he says, “It wasn’t as much political as it was just the values of critical thinking and tolerance for other people’s viewpoints. And it’s OK to protest, it’s OK to make your opinions known in a healthy debate. … One of the keys for us winning the Super Bowl and having a great culture last year was sort of a collaboration and a tolerance and an acceptance of each other as human beings. That’s what I was trying to get across.”
All smiles with @ClarkUniversity President David Angel!#Eagles Chairman & CEO Jeffrey Lurie will be giving today’s commencement speech. pic.twitter.com/UaSj54CbrF
— Philadelphia Eagles (@Eagles) May 19, 2019
He references the Super Bowl just once during the speech. Lurie uses Nick Foles as an example of impressive workplace leadership, explaining how in the huddle during the game-winning drive, Foles told his teammates that he loved them.
“Maybe it sounds hokey, but what could be more freeing of the best you have inside you than knowing you’re loved regardless of what happens?” Lurie says.
The anecdote doesn’t generate much of a response from the audience, but Lurie probably doesn’t mind. What would have even been the point of beating the Patriots in the Super Bowl if not to remind New Englanders of the victory from time to time?
He talks about his soon-to-be 92-year-old mom and the strength she showed at 33, when she lost her husband and had to raise three kids without him.
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Lurie explains that he wants the Eagles players to be engaged citizens who fight for social justice in their city. He says that the organization uses data analytics as much as any other professional sports team but also emphasizes how Doug Pederson’s strength is in showing empathy for his players and connecting with them emotionally.
After about 19 minutes, he finishes up and congratulates the Class of 2019. Lurie receives an honorary degree, and later, as students walk on stage to get their diplomas, a few stop before shaking the president’s hand, veer off to Lurie and say, “Go Birds!”
“It was so funny,” Lurie says later. “Predictable in a way, but very cool.”
Doug Pederson and Jeffrey Lurie talk during an Eagles minicamp last year. (Mitchell Leff / Getty Images)
It’s 3:15 p.m. on Tuesday, May 21, and Lurie has changed into a purple dress shirt and dark blue pants. Hours earlier, he was on the field in a golf shirt and black mesh shorts, taking in an Eagles practice. This is not unusual. Lurie is a sideline fixture at the NovaCare Complex. He especially hates missing practices during the season.
Asked why, Lurie says he wants to make sure he’s available to players and coaches. But there’s another more simple reason, too.
“I love it,” he says.
At his core, Lurie is a sports fan. He learned about football at his dad’s side. He was 7 when the Baltimore Colts beat the New York Giants in overtime to win the 1958 NFL championship, and he has been hooked ever since. The coffee table in Lurie’s office displays a variety of sports books such as “America’s Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation” and “Cooperstown Confidential: Heroes, Rogues, and the Inside Story of the Baseball Hall of Fame.”
Lurie says he’s read Bill Walsh’s “Finding the Winning Edge” a few times. He credits Walsh, Red Auerbach and John Wooden as “mentors from afar” whom he followed in working to build a winning organization. He noticed how they tried to be a step ahead and weren’t afraid to make unpopular decisions. As his fandom grew, Lurie became interested in how baseball teams allocated their resources differently. He was introduced to Bill James’ work and became attracted to data-based philosophies for team-building.
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“Those that started writing about this for football 15 or 20 years ago, I was hungry for that because how do you best build a roster? Where do you allocate resources?” he says. “I bought the Eagles (in 1994), right when the salary cap became established. Felt strongly that this was gonna become a big advantage for teams that could allocate resources better than others. And so I guess that mentality I brought to the franchise, but there were plenty of people here who completely agreed with that — from Joe Banner to Howie Roseman.”
On the way to Super Bowl LII, Pederson’s use of analytics became a popular topic locally and nationally. But before that season even began, Lurie strategically told a group of reporters that the Eagles were going to be aggressive with their in-game decision-making. He knew that if Pederson went for a fourth down or a two-point conversion and it didn’t work out, the head coach would get crushed. Lurie was trying to get ahead of the criticism by explaining that those on-field decisions would be based on extensive analytical research.
Asked now about what he thinks when he hears announcers say a team has to establish the run, Lurie rolls his eyes and looks exasperated. He takes a long pause and makes sure to choose his words carefully.
“What’s the right way to say this?” he asks himself out loud. “It’s just not a truthful way of reporting based on all the information we now have. OK? That’s sort of a nice way to say it.”
Lurie keeps a close eye on other sports. He wonders what the Golden State Warriors’ plan will be if Kevin Durant leaves in free agency. He’s close friends with Phillies managing partner John Middleton and says they offer each other a mutual support system.
It’s all a puzzle, Lurie says. Combining the analytics with observational scouting, medical analysis and psychological analysis.
“It’s about batting average,” he says. “If the NFL hits on 50 percent of its first-round picks, and you can hit on 55 percent, you have an advantage. If you’re gonna hit on 35 percent, you have a disadvantage, or whatever the numbers are for all of this.”
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Those who have worked for Lurie often point to the same quality as his biggest strength: a focus on hiring smart people and allowing them to do their jobs and have a high degree of autonomy.
“You gain some real advantage by having freethinkers and giving them the space to really become the best they can be as opposed to trying to satisfy me,” Lurie says. “I don’t ever want anyone to feel that way. If I thought Howie was making a decision to satisfy me, that would be the worst possible process. On the other hand, I want to give them the space to think outside the box.”
Of course, there’s another side to that philosophy. In 2015, Lurie gave head coach Chip Kelly full personnel control and jettisoned Roseman to the other side of the building. Kelly made a series of unwise roster moves that Roseman had to clean up when he returned.
Asked for his biggest regret as owner, Lurie says there are many, but he has trouble identifying just one. He admits that stripping Roseman of his power and giving Kelly full control is one of them. At the time, Kelly was coming off of back-to-back 10-win seasons. As Lurie has explained in the past, he felt like expanding Kelly’s reach was a necessary step to see what he had in the coach.
“I don’t regret the hiring of him because it was done with a really good thought process,” Lurie says.
“But, yes, I would say I regret giving him the kind of authority I gave him, yeah. That’s an easy one.”
Last season marked the 25th for the Eagles under Lurie’s ownership. Back in 2003, he was mocked locally for calling the organization the “gold standard” of the NFL even though it had never won a Super Bowl. That changed, of course, on Feb. 4, 2018, when the Eagles beat the Patriots. The wall of Lurie’s office features a framed photograph of Foles and Carson Wentz holding the Lombardi Trophy together with confetti raining down at U.S. Bank Stadium. With Roseman, Pederson and Wentz in place, the Eagles should be set up for a run of sustained success.
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The decision to buy the team in 1994 was a fork-in-the-road moment, Lurie says. He’d previously put together a bid to try to buy the Patriots but ended up losing out to Robert Kraft. When the Eagles became an option, Lurie thought ownership would be emotionally satisfying and also a smart business decision. Lurie paid $185 million, the most ever for a sports franchise at that time. The Eagles are now worth $2.8 billion, according to Forbes.
Lurie says “there’s a lot” he’d love to tell the 1994 version of himself. He concedes he didn’t have all the answers back then and still doesn’t. His approach at the start was to be patient with the organization, to observe and study what was happening internally and externally for a few years.
The Eagles made the playoffs twice under head coach Ray Rhodes before bottoming out at 3-13 in 1998. His replacement, Andy Reid, led the team to the postseason nine times in 14 seasons, including one appearance in the Super Bowl. After the Kelly era, the Eagles have made the playoffs twice in three years under Pederson, and Lurie finally got the championship he’d coveted.
During the 25-year run, only five NFL organizations have won more games than the Eagles. And there have been some fun what-ifs for Lurie along the way.
“I did look into buying other sports teams when I owned the Eagles, and I regret maybe one of them,” Lurie says. “There was probably an opportunity to be a significant owner of Arsenal. I wasn’t able to convince enough of the people that were possibly interested in selling at the time. But I saw it similar to the Eagles where it’s kind of a difficult stadium situation. And what if you build a new stadium and it’s right in London? I saw it as a refresh (to) energize that franchise, that team.”
Jeffrey Lurie interacts with Eagles fans before a game in 2014. (Ross D. Franklin / AP)
Lurie’s son Julian graduated from Harvard in 2017 and is now a part of the NFL’s junior rotational program. The two were sitting next to each other during the Super Bowl victory. Lurie says he thinks all the time about how he’s able to share these special experiences with Julian and his daughter Milena — something his father didn’t get a chance to do. He turns 68 in September, and it seems only a matter of time before Julian develops a role in what’s now the family business.
“He’s way more prepared than I ever was because he’s been living it since he was a little boy,” Lurie says. “He’s very analytical about every decision we make. … We discuss every team and every aspect of it. He loves the Eagles and he loves the NFL. So it’s a wonderful situation for me as a father.”
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If he had overanalyzed the pros and cons of ownership back in 1994, Lurie says now that he’s not sure he would have been so aggressive in trying to purchase the Eagles. He had a TV and movie background, along with a master’s degree in psychology and a doctorate in social policy. He had family money and support and could have taken his life in a number of different directions. But he doesn’t think any would have been as gratifying as his current gig.
“This is live dreams daily,” he says. “And I take it really seriously ’cause I love it. I feel we’ve got a chance to have a terrific franchise that can make the city proud for a long time, and I’ll do everything possible to make that happen.”
(Top photo: Brynn Anderson / AP)
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