Good column from Sheil Kapadia at The Athletic today.

It combines a couple of ideas about the Super Bowl hangover, a testy Doug Pederson, and the challenge of repeating last year’s success with a target on your back.

Sheil explains that there’s a new sign hanging in the locker room that says, “Super Bowl LII Champions,” featuring a picture of the Lombardi trophy.

Malcolm Jenkins is not a fan:

“I hate it, personally,” said Jenkins.

“My focus is all on adding another ‘I’ to the end of that. And so it’s great. But I’m well beyond celebrating last year’s accomplishments because they don’t mean anything this year, they don’t get us anything. I said it earlier this offseason, it’s not boxing where we get to hold the belt and somebody has to come beat us and take it. We don’t have anything. We’re at the bottom just like everybody else.”

That’s a good analogy, the boxing thing. Or MMA. You defend or vacate, so you’re either Georges St. Pierre cleaning out the welterweight division or you’re Conor McGregor, where you win two belts then decide to go fight Floyd Mayweather instead.

Personally, I think the “yeah well the Eagles won the Super Bowl” stuff on social media is getting a bit old. The victory itself will never get old, but let’s just hang the banner next Thursday and move on for now. The Eagles have a chance to build something special here, and when the reset button gets pressed in week one, you’re on the same footing as 31 other teams in the NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE.

There will probably be some rust, and the injury situation is what it is, but I don’t think the Super Bowl hangover is going to be much of an issue. We’ll find out soon – thank the Lord Jesus in heaven – because I don’t know if I can get through another preseason game.

Jenkins:

“I think the biggest thing is understanding that this team is gonna be different than last year’s team. We have new guys, just the dynamics of it all is different. And so we can’t expect to have those same results by just walking on the field. You’ve gotta treat being 13-3 the same as being 9-7. And that same mentality that we had last year has gotta be the same way we approach this year. And that’s gonna be a difficult thing to do. You’ve got the Super Bowl sign in your locker room. But it’s one of those things that we’ve put a lot of focus on.”

Well said.

Time’s yours.