Lose to Aaron Rodgers? Understandable. Lose to Zach Wilson? That would be a major stumble for the Eagles.

You know you were peeking. Don’t lie to me or to yourself. The biggest story of the NFL offseason dropped, officially, on April 24, when the New York Jets finally completed a trade to acquire Aaron Rodgers from the Green Bay Packers. And 2½ weeks later … Christmas. The league released the 2023 schedule. OK, so when do the Eagles play the Jets? That was a game to seek and find. And there it was, Week 6. MetLife Stadium. Sunday at 4:25 p.m. Yeah, you would have expected the Eagles to win their first five games — which, of course, they have — but Week 6, on the road against that defense and, more importantly, that quarterback … yeah, that promised to be a tough one.

And now … how tough is it? Once Rodgers went down with that torn Achilles tendon four plays into the Jets’ opening game, once Zach Wilson — the guy whose stint as their starting quarterback compelled them to trade for Rodgers in the first place — was back to being their starting quarterback, didn’t the expectations for Sunday shift? Didn’t that game go from being possible Eagles loss to probable-or-likely Eagles victory, just because Rodgers was out and Wilson was in? Did for me. I’ll bet it did for most of you. What about the Eagles? Did Rodgers’ injury change anything, or maybe everything, for them? Did they catch themselves looking ahead like the rest of us?

No, Nick Sirianni said.

Yeah, sort of, a couple of his players said.

“That’s for you guys to do, not for me to do,” Sirianni said Wednesday. “My job is to get the players ready to play, and my job is to get them ready day in, day out to get ready to play. That’s their job as well, to be completely locked in. Again, it’s not a mindset I’m asking anybody to understand, but I know the right mindset to have is to be completely locked in. That’s something that you don’t have to do that, right? I do. And the team does.

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“Fans don’t have to do that. We do. If you slip up in this league and start looking ahead, if we would have looked toward the Jets in the offseason or Aaron Rodgers or anything like that, we wouldn’t have been ready to tackle the day that we had ahead of us.”

OK. Cool coachspeak. No, Sirianni and his staff certainly didn’t react to Rodgers’ injury by immediately scrapping all their offseason prep on the Jets, rewriting every scouting report and potential game plan from the top, and forgetting about the five opponents before this one. But it would be nothing but human nature, and smart preparation, to adjust to this new reality: The Eagles weren’t going to face an all-time great. They were going to face a guy who, until two weeks ago, had been an all-time bust.

“Aaron Rodgers is definitely a bona fide Hall of Famer, someone I’d put in the category of Tom Brady,” cornerback James Bradberry said. “And anytime Tom Brady isn’t on the Patriots, it definitely makes a difference. Aaron Rodgers not being out there makes a difference.”

In what way?

“You really just pay attention and see how their team makes the adjustment,” Bradberry said. “Of course, they lose a Hall of Fame quarterback, a guy they thought was going to take them to the promised land, and now a guy who didn’t think he’d be starting this year — he’s starting. How are the guys around him going to rally?”

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So far, not bad. Over the Jets’ last two games, their defense has been better, and their running game, particularly in their 31-21 victory Sunday over the Broncos, has been good enough that Wilson hasn’t had to bear as much responsibility for the performance of the offense. That’s the biggest difference between the team the Jets were going to be with Rodgers and the team they are now with Wilson. And that’s the biggest reason that, if the Eagles were to lose Sunday, it would be such a disappointment. A 5-0 team goes down to Aaron Rodgers? Hey, it happens. A 5-0 team goes down to Zach Wilson, to a guy whose coaches are doing all they can to minimize his impact on a game? Ugh.

“Obviously, you’re comparing two different types of quarterbacks at this point,” safety Reed Blankenship said. “But at the end of the day, you can’t overthink that. Anything can happen. Zach could come out and have one of the best games of his life.”

If he does, it would be a letdown that, back on Christmas Day in May, no one could have seen coming, even as everyone (except the head coach, apparently) started looking ahead.

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