“First of all — HALLELUJAH!”

To set the stage: it was January 23, 2005. Philadelphia’s beloved Eagles were — for the fourth straight season — preparing for an NFC championship game that could send the team to its first Super Bowl in over two decades. Yet the prevailing mood around town was not one of excitement and anticipation, but of fear and worry.

After all, the Eagles’ three previous attempts at moving past the NFC title game had come up well short, even though the club’s two most recent conference championship game defeats came as both the betting favorite and the home team. No team in the conference had been more consistently competitive during the first half of the 2000s, but the Eagles had yet to find a way to conclude a season as NFC champs.

Behind a surface level of confidence, there was real concern in the City of Brotherly Love. “They won’t actually lose again, will they?” fans fretted, anxious that an era of regular-season dominance would fail to yield any significant tangible achievements.

On that day, Philadelphia truly needed a victory.

And when the final whistle sounded and the Eagles had downed the Atlanta Falcons by a 27-10 score, the moment required an on-field avatar for the sheer relief that the entire area was feeling.

It surprised no one that it was Brian Dawkins — in the first hoarse words out of his mouth during his post-game speech — who provided just that.

No local athlete in my lifetime has connected with the City of Philadelphia to the degree that Dawkins did. Sure, there were other heroes — Chase Utley, Allen Iverson and Jimmy Rollins immediately come to mind — but Dawkins’ bond with the fanbase was on an entirely different level.

Those players may have thrilled the crowd; Brian Dawkins personified the crowd.

From the second he clambered onto the turf doing his signature intro ritual, to the moment he forced his exhausted body off the field in triumph or defeat, one truth was undeniable: here was a player who obviously cared just as much about the Philadelphia Eagles as the fans themselves did.

Some background for the uninitiated — while Philadelphia adores all major sports, football is undoubtedly the most beloved. My theory as to why goes back to the very nature of the city’s inhabitants: emotional, passionate individuals. Football is unparalleled in its ability to pack as much action and raw energy as possible into each play, and Philadelphia feeds off that, in a way that they simply can’t when it comes to the stately nature of baseball, the steady seesawing of basketball, or the relentless toil of hockey.

The truth is that the degree of sports-related passion in Philadelphia is, in a word, bizarre. The loyalty and dedication on the part of the fans season after season borders on irrationality and outright stupidity. I believe we* as a fanbase subconsciously recognize this, and I speak from experience — knowing how many major personal events were purposely scheduled to avoid a conflict with a key game, or the many memorable life moments that revolved around a big win. On some level, as fans, we crave constant confirmation that we’re not actually crazy to care this much about something inherently meaningless.

Brian Dawkins was the living embodiment of that confirmation.

My guess is that it’s the absence of this “Dawkins-factor” that makes it difficult for fans to connect with certain players or coaches. Mike Schmidt famously dealt with a not-insignificant contingent of Philadelphians who never quite took to the best third baseman in MLB history, at least in part due to his graceful, seemingly effortless style of play. As a writer who covers the Philadelphia Flyers, it amazes me how many fans are legitimately bothered by Dave Hakstol’s stoic nature on the bench, even though it almost certainly does not negatively impact his coaching. Even longtime Dawkins teammate Donovan McNabb — who played a far higher profile position, of course — sparked regular grumbles with his famous smiling “my bad” on-field responses to poor throws. Players and coaches — even successful ones — who fail to sufficiently show they “care” rarely become universally loved, even though they were all surely fierce competitors on the inside.

There was never that problem with Brian Dawkins. Here was one of the best players in his sport, and with the exception of his prodigious talent (and his unwillingness to use profanity), he seemed to be just like us.

To be sure, Dawkins’ incredible work on the field should not be overlooked. No. 20 could have been the most emotional competitor in the world, and he wouldn’t have connected with Philadelphia to the degree he did if he wasn’t truly an elite free safety. The career numbers are staggering for a player at that position — 36 forced fumbles, 37 interceptions, 26 sacks. He’ll be entering the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Saturday not for his intangibles, but because he was legitimately an all-time great.

But his impact went far beyond stats. Dawkins, more than any other Eagle, made the plays that forced you out of your seat in sheer, cathartic release. The hit on Alge Crumpler during that victorious NFC championship game is his best-remembered play; it was the moment when most fans realized that this time, after three devastating losses, things would turn out differently. It certainly wasn’t his only iconic moment — the flying tackle on Giants receiver Tim Carter in a 2007 wild card game, the suplex tackle against Washington in 2003, the interception of Brett Favre in the “4th and 26” 2004 divisional playoff win all qualified as well, along with countless others — and they almost always concluded the same way: with the city going berserk, and Dawkins’ emotional celebration validating that reaction.

Over his 13-year Eagles career, Dawkins went from intriguing second-round pick to bonafide superstar, and his rise to the elite at his position coincided with (some would say caused) the emergence of the 00s Eagles into a league power. Appropriately, I’ve always believed that the Andy Reid era ended in spirit the day that Dawkins was allowed to leave Philadelphia. Yes, Reid and Joe Banner had taken hard lines against re-signing aging veterans in the past, but by saying that Brian Dawkins didn’t matter enough to keep around, it was implicitly telling the fans that they didn’t matter either. Reid may have hung around as head coach for another four seasons, but his teams would never win another playoff game in Philadelphia, and his front office irreversibly lost the hearts of the fanbase on that fateful day.

Dawkins, on the other hand, remains a legend. His game-day alter ego — which earned names like “Weapon X,” “Idiot Man,” and “Wolverine” — is an indelible part of Philadelphia sports history, and the primary reason why the No. 20 jersey remains a staple in the closets of Eagles fans, just waiting to plucked out for the next big NFC East showdown. Yet that was just one side of Brian Dawkins. The man who appeared on non-game days was soft-spoken and calm — seemingly the opposite of his on-field persona and a major shock to those only familiar with the pads-on version of Dawkins.

In a way, that separation fit with the fanbase as well. Philadelphia is a hard-working city; during the week, we go to jobs, go to school, live our lives and generally act like normal, civilized human beings. But every Sunday from September through December (and sometimes longer if we’re lucky), we lose our collective minds. Knowing that Dawkins could compartmentalize his two sides allowed us to believe it was OK to scream at our TVs once a week and treat a kid’s game as if it was the most important thing in the world for three hours.

Seven years after his pro career ended and nearly ten years since the last time he stepped on the field as a member of the Eagles, the connection between the city of Philadelphia and Brian Dawkins runs just as deep as it did back then. Even in retirement, he’s yet to let the fans down, remaining the same positive ambassador for the city and the game that he was during his playing career.

As people get older, the hero-worship of athletes tends to stop — maturity is one reason, but also because so many of the supposed “good guys” turn out to be less than that in actuality. I can’t deny my personal cynicism in this area, but I also won’t deny that Brian Dawkins is the only player left where it would utterly devastate me to find out that he’s not worthy of admiration. Luckily, while I’ve never had the pleasure of speaking with him, by all accounts, he’s exactly the person that Philadelphia believes him to be. Even knowledge of Dawkins’ battles with depression and alcohol abuse — which he bravely discussed this past week — only served to paint a more in-depth picture of his complexity as a person, making him even more relatable by highlighting the adversity that he had to overcome in his personal life.

Philadelphia isn’t a perfect city. And Brian Dawkins would surely be the first person to admit that neither he, nor his career, was perfect either. After all, when it came to the latter, he sadly never did lift the Lombardi Trophy as a player — it would take the next decade of Eagles to finally bring that long-awaited Super Bowl to Southeast Pennsylvania. But Dawkins connected with Philadelphia in a way that no other player in his generation could, which is why his Hall of Fame induction will be a collective celebration rather than just a singular one. Brian Dawkins was beloved by Philly because he is Philly — or at the very least, what we desperately want to believe that we are.

*Charlie O’Connor is a diehard Eagles fan and The Athletic’s lead Flyers columnist.

(Top photo: Chris McGrath/Getty Images)