Dave Bergner has Eagles beer koozies and Eagles license plates. He has an Eagles mouse pad and Eagles bobbleheads and a sparkly Eagles Christmas wreath. His dog, a 15-year-old Chihuahua named Baby Girl, eats kibble from an Eagles dish. His garden gnome holds up a sign that reads “Fly Eagles Fly.”
You may be beginning to suspect that Mr. Bergner is a fan of the Philadelphia Eagles, who are set to face the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl on Sunday.
Fandom comes in all shapes and sizes, but Mr. Bergner’s love for his favorite team is mostly expressed through a collection of jerseys large enough to outfit an entire N.F.L. draft class.
He opened the door to his home in Bristol, Pa., on his 145th straight day wearing a different one of the team’s jerseys — a saga that has drawn the attention of thousands of fans on social media. The team’s playoff run had come nowhere close to exhausting his deep bench of team apparel.
“I’ve got 300 jerseys, and only two suits,” Mr. Bergner, 55, said.
For the past 13 years, Mr. Bergner has worn a different jersey for each day of the N.F.L. season, usually paired with a coordinating Eagles hat. (He has a measly 200 of those.)
He had just returned home from the nearby steel storage facility where he works as an overhead crane operator and changed into a crisp DeSean Jackson jersey layered over a white long-sleeve shirt. Baby Girl yapped protectively at his feet.
Mr. Bergner owes his modest fame on TikTok and Instagram to his wife, Andrea, a fellow Eagles fan who encouraged him to start posting videos about each look in September.
“When I first met him, he had Eagles stickers all over his furniture, and I was like, ‘How old are you?’” she recalled.
“He goes, ‘Some of them glow in the dark,’” she added. “I’m like, ‘Oh, great.’”
He was uncomfortable in front of the camera at first, but loosened up with a few reps. Some of his dispatches are educational: The defensive end Brandon Graham wore No. 54 before adopting his more familiar No. 55. Others are sentimental: He devoted an entire week of jerseys to Andrea’s favorite players.
At times he is just trying to soothe a fan base not exactly known for its composure. “Go Birds, and don’t worry — we got this,” he told viewers on Day 86, wearing a black Jalen Hurts jersey. Later that day, the team won its matchup against the Baltimore Ravens, 24-19.
He shuffled past a wooden sign that read “We interrupt this marriage for FOOTBALL season!” and climbed the stairs to the attic bedroom. After his eldest daughter, Krystle, moved out, the room became his vault of Eagles gear.
The jerseys are filed according to their own kind of Dewey decimal system, divided first by brand (Wilson, Reebok, Nike) and then arranged in numerical order. Practically every inch of wall space is swallowed by emerald-green memorabilia. Mr. Bergner smiled as he indicated a signed photograph of Mr. Graham in Super Bowl LII, sacking Tom Brady.
Don’t even try asking Mr. Bergner how much he has spent on all of this stuff.
“I don’t think about it,” he said. “I ask people: ‘Do you think about what you spend on coffee and beer on the weekend? Do you think about what you spent when you go out to dinner?’ This brings me enjoyment.”
Still, he acknowledged that he can’t quite stop collecting. He browses eBay for good deals on jerseys or picks them up at flea markets or from the team store. Other collectors often approach him to buy his jerseys. He turns them all down.
“I have a problem,” he said.
Mr. Bergner grew up in Bristol and attended his first Eagles game in 1980, against the Oakland Raiders. He never played football but wore a Ron Jaworski jersey throughout his teenage years.
He began seriously collecting jerseys in his mid-20s. His acquisitions trace a line through Eagles history, from the halfback Steve Van Buren, who played for the team from 1944 to 1951, to the running back Saquon Barkley, who thrived in 2024 after coming to the team as a free agent.
In a sea of green, he also has a red-white-and-blue Pro Bowl jersey and a bumblebee-yellow jersey that the team wore to commemorate its 75th anniversary season. (The latter topped one list of the league’s most hideous uniforms.)
Like many Eagles fans, Mr. Bergner still resents the team’s change in jersey colors in 1996, from a vibrant Kelly green to a more muted teal that the franchise calls “midnight green.”
He is among those who credit the change to the owner Jeffrey Lurie’s wife at the time, Christina, who is rumored to have disliked the color. “I loved Kelly green,” he said. “Kelly green should be the standard color.”
He stuck with the team through triumphs and embarrassing defeats. He has a tattoo on his calf commemorating the miserable 1998 season, when the Eagles won only three games out of 16. When the franchise won its first Super Bowl, after the 2017 season, he could not contain himself.
“I’m on the floor crying, because I thought I would never see that in my life,” he said. Mr. Bergner and his two daughters — both born on game days — got matching tattoos of the Vince Lombardi Trophy soon after.
He thinks it is important to remind a younger generation that Eagles fandom has not always been a picnic.
“These kids don’t know what it’s like,” he said. Recent Eagles fans are accustomed to N.F.C. championship games and Super Bowl rematches, while older fans had a different experience. “We were going in October — we knew the season was over.”
This season, as the Eagles cruised to a 14-3 record, Mr. Bergner has been stopped for selfies at tailgates and recognized as “the jersey guy.” After a profile in the Philadelphia Inquirer, some fans have told him they think he is the team’s good-luck charm.
He wouldn’t go that far. “We’re family, and you shouldn’t put one person above the other,” he said.
Mr. Bergner is confident that the team will win the Super Bowl, despite its formidable opponents in Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs. He plans to watch at a friend’s house, wearing a Kelly green Saquon Barkley jersey that was a Christmas present from his wife.
Andrea likes that he wears jerseys so often because they make him easier to pick out in public, she said. She talked him out of wearing one exactly once: for his nephew’s wedding, on a Sunday in October 2017.
“I was going to wear it under my suit,” Mr. Bergner said. “She’s like: ‘You are wearing a tuxedo. Can you please not wear the jersey underneath?’”
He settled for an Eagles necktie. The Birds beat the Chargers, 26-24.
The post An Eagles Jersey for Every Day of the Season, With Plenty to Spare appeared first on New York Times.
