Eagles Keep Locker Room Chair Empty for Fallen Legend — 33 Years Later, His Spirit Still Leads the Team

Philadelphia, PA – August 6, 2025

The locker room was quiet that morning — too quiet for the middle of training camp. Helmets hung on hooks. Cleats sat beneath benches, perfectly aligned. But in one corner of the room, there was something different. One seat — marked only by a faded #99 stitched into the wall padding behind it — sat empty. No nameplate. No gear. No one dared to touch it.

The rookies didn’t know at first. To them, it was just a chair nobody ever sat in. But veterans? They knew. And when a young defensive tackle from Texas A&M reached for it on Day 1, he was met with a gentle but firm shake of the head. “Not that one,” a trainer said. No explanation. None needed.

Because that seat belongs to someone who hasn’t stepped onto a football field in 33 years — and yet somehow never left.

Not many players carve their name into the soul of a franchise without winning a championship. But when Jerome Brown anchored the defensive line for the Eagles in the late ‘80s, he did more than disrupt quarterbacks — he defined what it meant to be a warrior in midnight green. A first-round pick out of Miami, Brown made two Pro Bowls, earned All-Pro honors, and led one of the nastiest, most feared defenses in NFL history. Teammates called him “the spark plug” — but that didn’t do him justice. He was the fire itself.

"We lost more than a player. We lost our brother," Reggie White once said after Brown’s tragic death. In June 1992, just as training camp approached, Jerome Brown was killed in a car accident alongside his younger brother. He was 27. The Eagles were gutted. A season that began with title hopes turned into something else entirely — a mission to honor the man who should’ve been with them.

The team retired his jersey — #99 — almost immediately. They left his locker untouched the entire 1992 season. Coaches printed his signature on shirts. Players scribbled “Bring It Home for Jerome” on their gloves and tape. And though they fell short of a Super Bowl, that year became a symbol of what brotherhood truly meant in Philly.

Today, decades later, the echoes still linger. That chair remains untouched. Not by rule — but by reverence. Lane Johnson says he touches the wall behind it before every game. Jordan Davis says he studied Brown’s tape after joining the team, “not for technique — for heart.” And Coach Sirianni, when asked about it last year, simply said, “There are ghosts in this room that push us harder. Jerome is one of them.”

The Eagles may be younger now. Flashier. Hungrier. But some fires never go out. That empty seat isn’t empty at all. It holds a legacy. A weight. A promise.

And if this team finally hoists the Lombardi again — they won’t just bring it home for themselves.

They’ll bring it home for #99.