Philadelphia Eagles fans are under a national microscope after their own fans, Ryan CaldwellDuring a playoff game last Sunday, a female Green Bay Packers fan was seen taunting someone in a video that went viral.
But the history of the fanbase abuse of women The history of the other side goes back even further.
Former Dallas Cowboys player DeMarcus Ware, who played in Philadelphia every year of his career in Dallas from 2005 to 2013, told Fox Digital News that he once witnessed it during a game Eagles fans threw dangerous pellets at his mother Brenda Ann Ware. 2005 was his rookie year.
“My rookie year, when my mom was in the stands, I told her not to wear my jersey, and she was sitting in the front row, and in Philly, they put batteries in snowballs and threw them, and one of them hit me in the Mom,” Ware said.
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Seeing his mother pinned by a snow-covered battery, Ware all but abandoned his football duties and ran into the stands to start a fight.
“That’s when I turned around and I didn’t care about football anymore. I wanted to go see that guy in the stands. But I didn’t,” Ware said.
The linebacker held back and let team security attend to the fan who hurt his mother. But he lets the memory of it linger in his mind and motivate him every time he plays against the Eagles.
In 2005 in Philadelphia, the Cowboys defeated the Eagles 21-20 to sweep the season series.
In 17 career games against the Eagles, Ware has totaled 16 sacks. The Cowboys went 9-8 in games in which Ware played.
Ware’s most revengeful performance came against the Eagles in 2011. In January of that year, he completed three sacks in Philadelphia’s 2010 season finale, helping the team win 14-13. The following season, he had four sacks in an October game in Philadelphia, his most against a rival. He had two more sacks in Dallas’ second game against the Eagles that December.
Despite nearly a decade of hostility from Eagles fans toward his mother’s actions, he still respects the fans’ wishes. Veterans Stadium, the team’s former home, has on-site judicial courts and holding cells to deal with fans who break the law, something Ware doesn’t take lightly.
“Philadelphia Eagles fans, they’re very, very determined fans,” he said.
“In the past, when you had a jail at the bottom of the stadium, when you could go to jail for misconduct, even from our perspective every time we played, it was a competitive fight showdown if their The fans, they travel well, they’re tenacious, that’s who they are.”
Caldwell’s recent viral video has reignited certain stereotypes among the fan base as the team competes for a Super Bowl title this season.
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The video shows Caldwell calling nearby Packers fans vulgar and sexist names while mocking the man accompanying her with explicit gestures.
Caldwell has since been fired from his job as a project manager at BCT Partners in New Jersey. He has apologized but also defended himself, insisting his actions “were not without provocation” and that the viral video “does not show the full context of what happened.”
Still, Caldwell’s abusive behavior is just the latest in a years-long history of unruly and sometimes illegal behavior by fans.
In 1997, during a Monday night game against the San Francisco 49ers, a mischievous Eagles fan opened fire with a flare gun into stands filled with other fans, endangering multiple lives.
Several fights broke out around the stadium after the flares were fired, with much of the violence being directed at Eagles fans against 49ers fans.
“There were numerous fights and acts of intimidation, many directed at fans wearing 49ers jerseys,” the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote at the time.
After the game, Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie was forced to condemn his own fans.
“While we feel we have made significant progress in recent years regarding fan behavior at Veterans Stadium, what we witnessed last Monday was certainly a step backwards,” Lurie told reporters at the time.
In 2018, an Eagles fan was arrested for punching a Philadelphia police officer’s horse during an NFC divisional playoff game against the Falcons.
A man was evicted for being “intoxicated and without a ticket,” according to a police report at the time. After being ejected from Lincoln Stadium, the man walked up to a police officer on horseback and “began punching the horse in the face, neck and shoulders.”
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After the Eagles won the Super Bowl against the New England Patriots that year, a number of violent riots broke out around the city. Multiple convenience stores and a local Macy’s department store were reported to have been looted and vandalized. Cars were overturned, traffic lights and lamp posts were toppled, and there were even unconfirmed reports of explosions.
One of the most famous examples of unruly Eagles fans occurred in 1968, when a man dressed as Santa Claus walked off the field. He was booed mercilessly by fans upset about a disappointing season, and like Ware’s mother, he was even hit with a snowball.
But it doesn’t stop with snowballs, he’s also been hit with beer cans and even a sandwich.
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