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How An Unusual NFL Underdog Quickly Became A Marketing Touchdown

This article is more than 6 years old.

A full day before the Philadelphia Eagles were established Sunday by Las Vegas bookmakers as home underdogs in the playoffs for the second straight week, a company called BreakingT had been handed an excellent idea for a T-shirt by Eagles teammates Lane Johnson and Chris Long.

Following the Eagles’ 15-10 playoff victory over the Atlanta Falcons in Philadelphia, Johnson and Long pulled on rubber German Shepherd masks, poking fun at the bookmakers who made the Eagles 2½-point underdogs -- and especially at those people who thought they would lose.

It was the first time since the NFL playoff system expanded to 12 teams in 1990 that a No. 1 seed in either conference was expected to lose their first playoff game. But the Eagles won, and BreakingT president Jamie Mottram and his crew were ready to pounce.

“BreakingT operates kind of like a newsroom in that we watch all the big games and monitor social data with the intention of capturing the key moments,” Mottram said. “When Lane Johnson and Chris Long wore the dog masks it triggered our social alerts like crazy. That was obviously the thing people were responding to.”

The result was a green “Philadelphia Underdogs” T-shirt, which sells for $25. The shirt, which launched online at 1 a.m. Sunday, is already one of BreakingT’s best-selling shirts of the NFL season, Mottram said, and, as he added, “It could end up being No. 1.”

He said, “With any BreakingT product, our keys to success are A) identifying the right moment, B) creating the right design, C) getting it to market at the right time and D) reaching a lot of the right fans. We went four-for-four with this one."

But first, they had to see the dogs -- rather, the dog masks.

“From there it was just a matter of refining the "Philly Underdogs" idea and kicking it over to our head designer, Nick Torres, who knocked it out of the park,” Mottram said. “This all unfolded over the course of about four hours, start to finish.”

Mottram is actually a Washington Redskins fan, but he and his staff consulted “on the fly” with Brandon Lee Gowton at Bleeding Green Nation, an Eagles news website, for a design that would appeal to Eagles fans.

“That's something we always like to do, which is collaborate with different partners to get the tone just right,” Mottram said. “We always want to combine our social data filters and design expertise with high-level awareness of what a fan base will respond to.”

BreakingT also offers new themed T-shirts for two other teams in the playoffs, the Jacksonville Jaguars and Minnesota Vikings, but nothing for New England fans, because Mottram said the Patriots have been to the AFC finals so many times that fans won’t buy merchandise quite yet.

After the Vikings rallied for an improbable victory over the New Orleans Saints on a long touchdown pass on the last play of the game, Minnesota was made an even bigger favorite (3 1/2 points) to beat the Eagles in the NFC championship game Sunday than the Falcons were Saturday.

Mottram won’t say how many T-shirts the company printed or how many he thinks it could sell. The Eagles are, however, underdogs again this weekend, and would definitely be underdogs if they win Sunday and play the Patriots in the Super Bowl. Good for sales of T-shirts with dogs on them.

“That Philly was a home `dog’ last week was enough for us,” he said. “That they're home dogs again this week is gravy. And if they get to the Super Bowl, then this will have worked out quite well.”