The City of Brotherly Love has earned another badge of honor. During Tuesday's episode of "PFT Live," NBC analyst Chris Simms selected Philadelphia as his first overall pick in a draft of the six best football towns in the country, cementing the Eagles' fanbase as the gold standard for NFL passion.
Simms, a former NFL quarterback, didn't mince words when explaining his choice. His reasoning was simple yet powerful: Philadelphia represents everything a football player wants in a city.
"For me as an ex-player, I just wanted to be in a place where the sport's important," Simms explained during the show. "You want to be there, you want the fans to be engaged, crazy, love it, passionate, sports radio."
The analyst admitted that recency bias might have influenced his decision, but he stood firm on his evaluation of what makes Philadelphia special.
"The passion is real," he emphasized, drawing from personal interactions with Eagles fans at NBC headquarters who are "always passionate, wearing Eagles gear, they're obsessed with it."
What sets Philadelphia apart, according to Simms, isn't just recent success—it's the deep-rooted culture that has made football central to the city's identity for generations.
"The city has always been obsessed with it," he noted, highlighting how the sport transcends winning and losing to become part of Philadelphia's DNA. "You go to that stadium, it is electric there. The fans are crazy."
Philadelphia's selection as the top football town puts the Eagles in prestigious company. The complete draft included Pittsburgh (Florio's first pick), Chicago, Green Bay, Buffalo and St. Louis—cities with rich football traditions and passionate fan bases. The fact that Philadelphia was chosen ahead of legendary football towns like Pittsburgh and Green Bay speaks volumes about the current state of Eagles fandom. These cities have multiple Super Bowl championships and decades of sustained success, yet Simms saw something special in Philadelphia's current football culture that elevated it above the rest.
The passion that sometimes gets criticized as being "too intense" is the very quality that earned Philadelphia the top spot in this football town draft. It's a distinction that reflects not just on the organization, but on every fan who has made Lincoln Financial Field a fortress and turned Philadelphia into a place where football isn't just a game—it's a way of life.