Super Bowl LII: Eagles test teamwork before Super Bowl in Escape Game

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — Before they play the Patriots, the Eagles have been facing a different type of challenge. While staying in their team hotel attached to the Mall of America, groups of Eagles players have been showing up at The Escape Game Minneapolis to test their problem-solving skills and teamwork.

“They do incredible,” Blake Telshaw, the game’s quality manager for the location, told Newsday on Thursday. “Both teams that I helped the other day got out with 7 1/2 minutes left, which is pretty incredible.”

Telshaw said there is usually about a 40- to 50-percent success rate in the rooms they were locked into, and most teams that do emerge get out “with a couple of minutes left at the most.”

The Eagles have been dropping by all week. The quarterbacks took part in a game together. The wide receivers did the same. Telshaw said the Eagle who has participated the most has been Carson Wentz, the injured former starting quarterback. He’s done three of them since Monday.

The Patriots, Telshaw said, have not stopped by as regularly. While their hotel also is attached to the Mall of America, only one Patriots player has come by, and that was with a friend who is not on the team.

The big question, of course, is whether being able to get out of the Gold Rush, Mission to Mars, Prison Break or Heist room bodes well in the Eagles’ pursuit of a Super Bowl trophy.

Telshaw, in his professional opinion, said it may.

“They’re having a good time and they seem pretty relaxed,” he said of the Eagles. “They definitely have the mental capacity and are showing off some critical-thinking skills.”

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.