Shortly after the Bears finished a 3-13 season in 2016, Chicago receiver Alshon Jeffery made a somewhat bold claim to a bunch of reporters gathered around him:
Alshon Jeffery guaranteed his team would win this Super Bowl, even though he kind of didn’t have a team at the time
Technically, he’s one game away from proving himself correct.
Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports
“I guarantee you we’ll win a Super Bowl next year.”
Jeffery was on the verge of free agency, and with the Bears in a state of transition, there was a clear possibility that he wouldn’t wind up back in Chicago. He’d played five years there and never made the playoffs in the course of scoring 35 touchdowns and putting up two 1,000-yard seasons.
Conspicuously, he didn’t specify what “we” meant.
It turned out it meant the Eagles. Jeffery signed with Philadelphia and turned in a 789-yard, nine-touchdown regular season. He had two more touchdowns and averaged 73 yards per game in the Eagles’ two-game run through the NFC playoffs, helping them get to Super Bowl 52 against the Patriots on Sunday.
Jeffery said after the Eagles’ NFC Championship Game win against the Vikings that he’d made the comment confidently, even if he didn’t know where he’d be playing.
“I believe in what I say,” Jeffery said. “You gotta speak it into existence. I believed in it. It’s that simple. I just believed in it, man.”
Victory guarantees are a tradition that’s been running for about as long as athletes and sportswriters have worked alongside each other. (So, for a long time!) Jeffery might be the first athlete to ever succeed on a guarantee with a team he couldn’t have known he’d have been playing for at the time he made the comment.
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