Eagles’ Will Beatty won’t fixate on Super Bowl win with Giants
Will Beatty, then with the Giants, plays against the Washington Redskins at MetLife Stadium on October 21, 2012 in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Credit: Getty Images / Al Bello
BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — A lot of former Giants walk around Super Bowl week flashing their rings. There’s one, though, that wants to keep his not only out of sight but out of mind.
Will Beatty, the former Giants offensive lineman who was on the team that won Super Bowl XLVI, is now a member of the Eagles. And while he is one of the few players on the team who has been to this height, he refuses to fixate on his experience with the Giants.
“A lot of guys are like, ‘You’ve been there, you have a ring, you’ve done that!’ ” Beatty said of his new teammates. “And I’m like, ‘Winning a Super Bowl, you can’t explain [the feeling]’ . . . But it’s old. It’s something that is in the past. It’s not something that I’m looking at and saying because I have a ring I’m going to be entitled to get another one. You have to work, and you have to put everything into it, as if that never happened. You still have to have that hunger to be there like you’ve never been there before.”
Beatty has a chance to win another ring with the Eagles. If he does, there is a chance he’ll do it without ever participating in a postseason game. He was on injured reserve for the Giants’ run in 2011 with an eye injury and has been inactive since he signed with the Eagles in midseason.
But in his mind, there is little difference between being on a Super Bowl-winning team and playing and winning a Super Bowl. Especially with the Eagles.
“This is a group, it’s not a one-person machine,” he said. “You look at a car and you see the outside. Every once in a while you look at the engine. But unless you are building the car, you don’t know everything that goes into it . . . Every part has a special role and every player on this team makes it special. You take away one of us, you’re taking away something that helps the team.”
So Beatty likely won’t be playing on Sunday, but he’ll be on the field with his guys.
“This is a team effort each and every day,” he said. “Whoever you see dressed up [for the game], they represent each and every one of us who are not dressed.”
It took a while for Beatty to even get a practice jersey this season. After he was not re-signed by the Giants, he was a free agent for most of the year. The Eagles finally signed him on Nov. 14. At that point the Eagles were already serious Super Bowl contenders.
“I had to try to find my footing, find my place,” he said. “Everybody else was already chugging forward and it was like, hop on and don’t miss a beat. Learn everything. Learn the new players, learn the new system, and catch up. I’d just had the one experience with one team. This is my first experience elsewhere and it’s been a great experience. It’s a team that has accepted me. Now you have a job to do and we want you to help us the best that you can. I have a job to do and do whatever I can to help this team.”
Beatty said he wants to continue playing beyond this season.
“This is definitely not it for me,” he said.
But he also knows that it’s not entirely up to him.
“Yes, I wanted to play in Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4,” he said. “But I had to find a home. To have this be a home for me is a great feeling.”
And the culmination of a goal.
“This is every team’s dream on day one of training camp,” he said of the super Bowl. “But day one of training camp I was sitting at home dreaming of being here, too. To be here now is a blessing and I’m thankful I have this opportunity. The season has been a roller coaster, but the ride is almost over. Now we just have to finish strong and finish right. I’m doing everything I can to make sure we can do that.”
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.
