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The Eagles have great expectations, and around here, expectations can lead to ... anxiety | Mike Sielski

This is a team that could — and maybe should — win a Super Bowl. That's a big contrast with our underdog sensibility.

It will be on Eagles head coach Doug Pederson to manage the high expectations surrounding the team.
It will be on Eagles head coach Doug Pederson to manage the high expectations surrounding the team.Read moreDAVID MAIALETTI / Staff Photographer

There is a kind of team that is perfect for Philadelphia, and there is a kind of team that is not, and DeSean Jackson has been around here long enough to recognize the difference.

He was a member of the 2011 Eagles, and they were not perfect for Philadelphia, in any regard. They had brought in so many big names, so many mercenaries, during that offseason: Nnamdi Asomugha; Jason Babin; Cullen Jenkins; Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie; Vince Young, who infamously dubbed them “The Dream Team.” Michael Vick was the quarterback, freshly signed to a $100 million contract. Jackson and LeSean McCoy and Jeremy Maclin and Brent Celek -- there was major talent at the skill positions. There was Super Bowl buzz. There were expectations. And there was a collapse. Those Eagles won their first game, lost their next four, staggered to an 8-8 record, and led the NFL in empty promises.

“That places a target on you, and it brings in stuff you might not want,” Jackson said Thursday, after the Eagles’ first day of training camp. “It’s like a cloud over you throughout the whole year.”

It’s the kind of dynamic that few fans around here are used to, and that few handle well when it does arise. This is Philadelphia, after all, with its underdog sensibility. It’s a more comfortable position to be in. You feel like there’s less to lose. Following a team that is a heavy favorite can be a blast, witnessing that greatness on a nightly or weekly basis, but here, it’s unfamiliar, and fraught with worry. There was a reason that the 2008 Phillies and the 2017 Eagles inspired such joy, and the reason went beyond just those teams’ championships. They were expected to be pretty good, but they turned out to be surprisingly great. They fit the culture, the collective mindset here, perfectly: Here is our heart. Just don’t hurt us.

Consider the inverse. Consider, for instance, the 2002 Eagles and the 2011 Phillies, both of whom were supposed to be marvelous and were marvelous … right up until a big game with everything on the line. Has there ever been a tenser sports atmosphere than Citizens Bank Park’s on the night of Game 5 of the ’11 NL Division Series? Has there ever been a sadder and more somber exit from an arena than the zombie march out of Veterans Stadium in January 2003 after Ronde Barber zoomed down the sideline? Those losses were so hard because the expectations were so high. The instinct here, when things are going as well as they’re supposed to, is always to glance at the sky for the falling anvil.

Which brings us to the 2019 Eagles. On paper, they more closely resemble those last two teams than they do those championship-winning ones. Carson Wentz is healthy. Their roster is deep. There wasn’t a hole in the roster that Howie Roseman didn’t appear to patch during the offseason. Doug Pederson does two important things -- design/call an offense and read a locker room -- as well as or better than any head coach in the league. They should be terrific, and everyone around here and around the NFL knows and acknowledges as much, including the Eagles themselves. If they reach or win the Super Bowl, it would not be a surprise at all. They are among the favorites to do so, and any outcome short of that will be seen as a huge disappointment.

That’s a heavy burden. That’s a measure of pressure that, one could argue, exceeds what the Eagles faced last season, when the afterglow of Super Bowl LII was still lingering. So how do they counteract it, mute it, prevent it from affecting them?

“Don't worry about the outside noise,” Pederson said. “That's obviously for the writers to write about and speculate upon. It's a long time for us before we play a game. A lot of things can happen between now and then. We just have to focus on us. My job is to make sure that we stay grounded, stay humble, and we come to work every day.”

To that end, Peterson, in a team meeting Wednesday, mentioned the Super Bowl, the possibility, the goal. But he mentioned it just once, cautioning his players against allowing that noise to seep in.

“Those things only change when you don’t have a process, if you let everybody’s expectations, what people say, drive you,” safety Malcolm Jenkins said. “For us, it’s about a process. We come to work every day. We prepare. We try to get just a little bit better than we were the day before, and we go compete. We’ll do that one day at a time, one week at a time, and we’ll look at the end result later.”

“A lot of times, when you’re labeled a Super Bowl team, you always have to live up to that hype and that noise,” Jackson said. “Like I said, we know the goal, but we’re not going to continuously harp on it.”

They won’t have to. If the 2019 Eagles turn out to be as good as everyone believes they’ll be, it will be a fun ride. But those expectations aren’t going away. The test of this season will be simple: How do the Eagles handle them? And how does everyone else?