After beating the bricks off of the Minnesota Vikings in their home opener on Monday Night Football, the Philadelphia Eagles were flying high. The world was their oyster, the national media was singing their praises, and fans who saw a presumed South Philly dynasty crumble into nothing finally had something to believe in.

And yet, Nick Sirianni didn't want to take any chances in the lead-up to Week 3, when his Birds would fly – or, more realistically, bus – down to Landover, Maryland, to take their first bite at the NFC East. While the Commanders weren't exactly Super Bowl favorites, they'd been putting up points and moving the ball well over the first two weeks of the season and had faced off against Sirianni's offense more than any other team in the NFL – if ever there was a game to take seriously, this was the one.

But what would Sirianni do to fire things up? Easy: Kobe Bryant.

That's right, though he played his pro basketball in LA, Bryant learned the ropes at Lower Merion High School, which is located just outside of Philadelphia. Though the school played a big part in making Bryant a star, it also helped the Philly-born star, who spent much of his time growing up in Italy while his father played professional ball, solidify his status as an Eagles fan; a fandom he would maintain through the remainder of his life.

With Bryant gone, Sirianni couldn't call him up and ask for an in-person pep talk like his predecessor, Doug Pederson, did in 2017, when the Eagles took on the Los Angeles Rams, but he found a creative workaround that brought the Momba Mentality into Philly's locker room before their consequential contest.

Kobe Bryant's words inspired the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 3.

“Oh, ain't no way we're losing this game. We're about to beat the s— out of Spain.” – these words, spoken by Bryant in the trailer for the upcoming Netflix documentary “Redeem Team,” struck a chord with Sirianni while driving down I-95 towards FedEx Field, according to Tim McManus of ESPN, and inspired the second-year head coach to share the message with his team on the way to the game. The message was simple: though Bryant was friends with Pau Gasol, his teammate with the Lakers, because he was in the opposite uniform, he was going to take it to him all game long without remorse.

“It was a perfect video to add to the story I was telling there, and it did fit pretty well [with the opponent] of like, ‘Pau Gasol is my brother, Pau Gasol is my teammate, Pau Gasol, I love him, but I'm running through that guy's chest,'” Sirianni said. “It was a cool video and it fit really well this weekend to say, we're the ultimate competitors.”

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See the parallels? While some members of the Eagles remain friends with Carson Wentz, who was most recently on the team in 2020, that doesn't mean you can't play him hard and go all-in on competing. Fortunately, the Birds took this to heart, as, after players like Fletcher Cox said hello to Wentz before the game, the defense went on to sack the North Dakota State product nine times.

Needless to say, Sirianni's plan worked, but it wasn't the only Bryant-related element of the game. No, in a fun twist of fate, the final score had a little Momba in it too.

“Someone made it clear to me that the score ended up 24-8, which I thought was pretty cool, even though we wanted to score a lot more points than that and we wanted them to score nothing,” Sirianni said. “But, we'll take that.”