Towards the end of the movie the announcer says the Eagles are facing 3rd down and 10 yards to go on their own 5 yard line. When the running back is tackled the announcer says that he's very close to a first down. Yet when he gets tackled, the 10 yard line marker is clearly at least 5 yards away. Additionally, when the referee finishes the measurement and shows just inches to the first down, the ball is on the 10 yard line, as the line marker is clearly visible.
Ater open try outs, Vince is trying to start his car with a dead battery. One car goes by behind his car twice.
In Coach Vermeil's office, Papale puts his playbook on the desk. The coach puts his left hand on the book to push it back to Papale but when the camera changes angles, the coach uses his right hand.
Towards the end, after Vince Papale scores the touchdown he is shown in close-up with a big grin on his face. It is quite clear that he is not wearing his mouthguard even though it was there just seconds before.
When the players in the locker room read the ex-wife's note you can see brown trousers and a yellow button-down shirt hanging in Papale's locker. Cuts to Papale in his training camp room, during the players reading scene, show him wearing those clothes. It's highly unlikely he had more than one matching outfit.
When Vince Papale comes into his room at the training center and finds Dennis Franks sitting on the bed, Franks says that Dick Vermeil is trying to shake things up by "putting veterans with rookies and rookies with veterans". But, Vince Papale and Dennis Franks were both rookies in 1976. Franks was undrafted out of the University of Michigan that year.
While the film accurately points out that Vince Papale never played college football, it omits the fact that Papale played professional football in the World Football League with the Philadelphia Bell before joining the Eagles.
In the film, Vince Papale's wife is portrayed as a woman who moved to Philly from New York and was a huge Giants fan. At a recent speaking engagement in Mt. Laurel, NJ, Papale said his wife was born and raised in Philadelphia and is an enthusiastic Eagles fan. He said his wife didn't even watch the Giants' Super Bowl win last year. "My life must have been too boring for a movie so they had to make some things up," he said.
Vince Papale never scored an NFL touchdown. However, the play in the movie in which he scores a touchdown is based loosely on a real play. In the real game against the New York Giants, Papale forced a Giants defender to run into his own punt returner. Papale recovered the fumble, but did not score on the play. NFL rules prohibit players from advancing "muffed" punts. (The actual play is shown in the montage at the end of the movie).
During the opening kick off against the Dallas Cowboys, the camera follows Vince as he rushes towards the kick returner. During this run, the camera captures several Eagles players getting knocked down in front of Vince Papale. By the time Vince gets within sight of the ball carrier, he himself is blocked/knocked down. If you are counting the number of Eagles players knocked down during the first part of the return, you'll count 13 instances of players getting leveled. Standard NFL Rules, a team can only have 11 players on the field - which leads the film to a gross over exaggeration of the play.
An obvious screw-up, the handwriting on the disparaging note from Vince Papale's first wife who left him high and dry exactly matches the handwriting on the 3" X 5" note card left with the box from the Janet Cantwell character delivered to Vince's training-camp room. The same hand wrote both notes.
When the guys at the bar first learn that the Eagles hired Coach Dick Vermeil, they ask for the television to be turned up. The guy never touches the volume button located at the top of the television, but instead just reaches up and acts like he turns a volume knob at the bottom.
Mark Wahlberg is much shorter than the real Vince Papale. Vince Papale is 6 foot 2, while Wahlberg is 5 foot 9.
In the second to final play in the movie, the 3rd and 10 running play, the Eagles are supposed to be on their own side of the field with "still a long way to go for the go ahead score" as said by the announcer. In the view of the camera you can clearly see the 10 yard line marker with the arrow pointing to the left, meaning they are only about 10 yards away from reaching the endzone.
During one of the games, a miscellaneous member of the Eagles is wearing a sweatband on his head with a modern Eagles logo upside down, not the logo of the Eagles at that time.
During the tryout scenes Vince Papale is wearing Adidas Superstar (shell top) football shoes. Adidas didn't make a football version of this shoe until the 2000s.
In the game at Texas Stadium, two metal struts are seen traversing the hole in the dome. These were not built until 1993, when they were used for Garth Brooks' tour in 1993. The "Garth Bars" remained in place until Texas Stadium was demolished in 2010.
During the game against Dallas Cowboys at Texas Stadium the super bowl banners from the early 1990s are visible.
In the final game of the movie, when the Giants play the Eagles, Vince Papale is knocked out of bounds on one of the special teams play. As he gets up, the shoulder cap of his pads are sticking out of his jersey. Those are shoulder pads currently used today by modern players and did not exist back then.
Veterans Stadium (which was imploded before this movie was made) is depicted correctly externally (including the exterior elevator to the luxury boxes and the ramps that were visible from the outside). However, the real Vet had individual seats, not bleacher style seats as depicted and the real Vet was a "octorad", a rounded octagon shape, and was convertible for both football and baseball, and so could not and did not have an oval track as depicted in the movie. The Vet also had lousy Astroturf with line markings for both the NFL and college football (double hash marks) as Temple played there at the time, while the movie apparently shows a grass field. Images at the end of the movie showing the real Vince Papale playing in the Vet show what it really looked like.
When Vermiel is talking to Papale after the open tryout, the Walt Whitman Bridge is seen over their shoulders from the parking lot where Papale has parked his car, making it appear to the south of the stadium and close by. The Walt Whitman Bridge is actually to the north of Veterans Stadium, and approximately 15 city blocks to the east, making the view shown very unlikely.
The location of Veterans Stadium in relation to the Walt Whitman Bridge is incorrect in the movie. The Vet was farther west (away from the bridge). Also, The Vet was south of I-76 (the road on the bridge), not north of the road as implied in the movie.
When Janet is in the bar talking about Sam Huff's statistics, she states that he led the Giants to the Championship games in 1956, '58, '59, '61, '62 and '63. When Tommy challenges her with "How many championships they win?", Vince Papale states "The big goose egg." In fact, the Giants won the NFL Championship in 1956 by defeating the Chicago Bears 47 to 7.
There were no players on the 1976 Eagles roster named TJ Banks or Dean German, however they are both mentioned numerous time throughout the movie.
In the opening scene when a group of police officers are closing the gate three officers are wearing a 6 point hat while the fourth officer is wearing a round military style hat.