Do you remember where you were on April 30, 2015? Do you remember what happened that night, or more specifically, what didn’t happen?

April 30, 2015 was the night the Tennessee Titans selected University of Oregon quarterback Marcus Mariota second overall in the NFL Draft. That was also the night that the Titans didn’t trade the #2 overall pick to your Philadelphia Eagles, or to anyone else for that matter.

Absent context, the Titans’ decision was fairly unsurprising and conventional. Franchise quarterbacks are notoriously hard to come by, and Mariota was an undisputed, can’t-miss prospect even considering that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers took Florida State’s Jameis Winston just ahead of him.

In Philadelphia sports history, though, context is everything.

The 2014 Eagles were coached by Chip Kelly, erstwhile Oregon head ball coach and the man who had created the offensive system that made Mariota so devastating as a Duck. That 2014 Eagles team posted a second consecutive 10-6 season; like other 10-6 Eagles teams before it, that squad missed the playoffs.

Still, Kelly was cresting a wave of exuberance and enthusiasm, and had absolute power in the spring of 2015 after Eagles general manager Howie Roseman (remember him?) was stripped of his title to give Kelly the keys.

Photo credit: Tim Heitman, USA TODAY

The story basically wrote itself. Kelly, limited by the physical shortcomings and overall mediocrity of Nick Foles, would mortgage the future to get his college QB back. Who else could run Kelly’s, um, “exotic” offense better than the guy who ran it for him successfully in college?

Philadelphia sports talk radio spent the better part of three months debating whether the Eagles could get Mariota, what it would cost, and whether the cost would be worth it. Had anyone really known what Mariota might cost, everyone could have saved themselves a lot of hot air.

Per Matt Lombardo of NJ.com:

“That question didn’t come up very often,” Kelly said, when asked by (ESPN’s Adam) Schefter if he could have done anything more to facilitate a trade with the Tennessee Titans to acquire the No. 2 overall pick to draft Mariota. “With Tennessee, they weren’t moving off the pick. Rightly so. They were looking for the same thing we were, to get themselves a really top-quality quarterback.”

So the Eagles were never getting Mariota. And guess what? It’s a damn good thing they didn’t:

“Wow” is a significant understatement in the light of the Eagles’ blistering start in 2017. Brandon Boykin is long gone, of course. But Fletcher Cox is an absolute monster, steadily earning the massive contract the Eagles bestowed on him. Cox is like Corey Simon 3.0. The two linemen needed to block Cox every down leave holes for Brandon Graham and others (including the likes of Mychal Kendricks) to exploit.

And let’s talk about those picks. We’ll never know exactly which high-round selections would have been sent with Cox, Kendricks, Boykin and “more” to Tennessee. But we do know that the Eagles managed to take Nelson Agholor and Jordan Hicks in 2015, and that the stockpile of picks that didn’t go to Tennessee was ultimately leveraged to trade for the pick that delivered Carson Wentz. ESPN’s Tim McManus argued this past May that the Eagles were winning the Wentz trade, and the Cleveland Browns’ present (and eternal) misery only drives that flag further into the turf.

Incidentally, none of this is an indictment of Mariota. He has done more or less what the Titans drafted him to do. The Titans were predictably awful in 2015, but that’s why they were picking second overall in the prior draft. Mariota started 15 games last season and the Titans went 9-7, aided by a resurgence from some guy named DeMarco Murray.

Plus, so much of Mariota’s value comes from his legs. The spate of devastating quarterback injuries the league has experienced in recent years (and days) proves conclusively that a running quarterback is always one hit away from being on the injured reserve list.

So much of Mariota’s perceived value to the Eagles in the spring of 2015 was tied to the assumed rapport he’d have had with Kelly, who is now long gone. As is Ken Whisenhunt, the Titans’ coach when they steadfastly refused to give up the Mariota pick. Mike Mularkey is coaching the Titans, for now anyway.

Somehow, without trading for Mariota, the 2017 Eagles are 5-1, undefeated in both their conference and their division, and newly-adorned odds-on NFC Super Bowl favorites.

Always be careful what you wish for, because you might get it.