Legendary Los Angeles Lakers player Kobe Bryant Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports

Kobe Bryant video motivated Eagles ahead of win over Commanders

By Zac Wassink | Last updated 9/26/22

The 3-0 Philadelphia Eagles are one of the early feel-good stories of the 2022 NFL season and maybe the best overall team in at least the NFC after three weeks of action.

It appears they had some extra motivation ahead of Sunday's dominant 24-8 win at the division-rival Washington Commanders.

According to Tim McManus of ESPN, Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni included a video from an upcoming Netflix "Redeem Team" documentary about the 2008 United States Olympic men's basketball squad in his pre-game talk to his players. The clip features a story about how Kobe Bryant told his U.S. teammates ahead of a contest against Spain that he was going to run "through" the chest of friend and Los Angeles Lakers teammate Pau Gasol, which Bryant did on "the first play" of the matchup:

(Warning: Video contains multiple uses of not-safe-for-work language):

In 2004, the US Olympic Men's Basketball team lost the gold and sought redemption in Beijing 2008. @KingJames, @DwyaneWade, and Kobe Bryant led The Redeem Team. This is that story. #TUDUM pic.twitter.com/95MCsOQ6h3
— Netflix (@netflix) September 24, 2022

Sirianni embraced this message heading into the Week 3 game because Washington quarterback Carson Wentz played for the Eagles from 2016 through the 2020 NFL season.

"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 explained. "It was a cool video and it fit really well this weekend to say, we're the ultimate competitors."

Sirianni's tactic clearly worked, as the Eagles recorded a ridiculous nine sacks and 17 quarterback hits in the double-digit win that ended sporting Bryant's famous two NBA numbers: 24 and 8.

"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 added in his comments. "But, we'll take that."

Bryant spent part of his youth in the Philadelphia area and was a known Eagles fan: