Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie believes it’s possible to maintain championship level

It won't be easy, but Lurie is betting the Eagles have found the formula of the right players to bring back.

Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie still wonders about if things had gone a bit differently at the Super Bowl.Read moreYong Kim / Staff Photographer

Published Mar. 28, 2023, 10:40 p.m. ET

PHOENIX — Jeffrey Lurie is still replaying the final two minutes of Super Bowl LVII, asking the type of tormenting question that can never be answered.

“One timeout,” the Eagles owner said Tuesday. “A minute-and-43. We get the ball back. What would happen?”

Returning to the site of the Eagles’ 38-35 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs for the NFL owners’ meetings certainly won’t help the visual from two months earlier, specifically the defensive-holding penalty that allowed the Chiefs to maintain possession, salt the clock away and kick a game-winning field goal while the Eagles’ offense watched from the sideline.

During his annual news conference with reporters, Lurie recapped the past year: the process of building a juggernaut, coming painfully close to a championship, and starting the work of keeping a title window open.

The next step is just as difficult as the previous ones, if not more so, Lurie acknowledged.

“I think it’s challenging to become NFC champs, or NFL champs,” he said. “And it’s very challenging to sustain it, but it’s very possible to. I’m super excited about what we can do in 2023, 2024, going forward. I mean, I can’t think of any reason not to be super excited.”

The Eagles found themselves in a similar situation five years ago, coming off the first Super Bowl victory in franchise history and leveraging future assets in pursuit of another starting in the 2018 offseason. The quick regression that led to a 4-11-1 season in 2020 is the cautionary tale of the challenges of maintaining a contender. Quarterback Carson Wentz’s regression was a major factor in the rapid decline, but missed opportunities in the draft and overvaluing veterans deep into their careers also played a part.

That decline was in the back of Lurie’s mind going into the offseason, but the Eagles owner said general manager Howie Roseman, coach Nick Sirianni, and he still ultimately decided bringing back a handful of veterans like center Jason Kelce, defensive end Brandon Graham, and defensive tackle Fletcher Cox made sense.

“We certainly learned from it in certain ways,” Lurie said. “For example, this year we thought about whether we should re-sign some of our older players. What we really decided was, and this was more Nick and Howie than me, that they’re playing at such a high level that it was a smart thing to bring back Jason Kelce, and BG and Fletch at different levels. You don’t want to just take something that you’re worried about if actually they’ve been playing great. So that’s a good example. Try to retain key players and know when you think it’s not smart to spend the money that way and allocate resources.”

Lurie pointed to the Chiefs’ 2021 offseason. Kansas City traded star receiver Tyreek Hill to the Miami Dolphins because of salary-cap constraints around quarterback Patrick Mahomes and got a package of picks, including a first-rounder in last year’s draft as a return. The Chiefs’ ability to weave younger players into their already-established nucleus is something Lurie said the Eagles will have to emulate to sustain success.

“They’re going through a transition,” Lurie said. “You have to do that when you have a franchise quarterback on a rookie deal. The teams that develop their players, draft well, use the resources in free agency selectively — there’s a lot of off-field things. You want the culture to be great, you want to have an outstanding program for injury prevention, which is multivariable. It involves nutrition, training, practice schedules, alternative modes of therapy, and things like that. Mental-health awareness, there’s so much that goes into that.”