The Eagles are still the bullies on the NFL’s block. A small moment Tuesday showed why.

As the Eagles’ penultimate training camp practice neared its end Tuesday, Nick Sirianni set up a familiar scenario, and it led to a familiar sight. Barking instructions through a megaphone, Sirianni laid out the hypothetical situation for his first-team offense and first-team defense: 2 minutes, 12 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, offense is up three points, defense has one timeout left, go.

A first-down handoff to Saquon Barkley gained 2 yards. The clock stopped at 2:00 for the two-minute warning. Then Jalen Hurts handed the ball to Barkley again on second down, and Barkley blasted through the left side of the line and broke into the clear. You could practically hear a national broadcaster — Mike Tirico, Kevin Burkhardt, Joe Buck — calling the play, his voice rising … except Sirianni blew his whistle.

“Third-and-2,” he said.

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Barkley pulled up and threw his head back in playful frustration. He knew the point of the drill. It could be boiled down to two questions. The first: Could the Eagles’ defense take the ball away from an opponent that was trying to protect a lead? The second is more interesting and revealing, though: Could the Eagles’ offense run the ball successfully in a situation in which everyone knows the Eagles need to run the ball successfully? Yes, it was training camp. Yes, it was practice. But yes, they could.

The sequence was a timely reminder, amid the long-dragging days of late August and a mostly ragged training camp for the Eagles, of one of the qualities that have set them apart from most of the NFL over the last few years. It’s easy to express that quality in a straightforward way: The Eagles run the ball really well. But even that very true, very direct sentence doesn’t capture fully the degree to which the Eagles’ willingness and ability to run the ball — with Barkley, with Hurts, with their offensive line, with the other running backs they’ve had recently — has made them one of the best teams in the league and literally made them the best team in the league last season.

So let’s get indirect. When coaches and analysts evaluate quarterbacks, one of the standards they often use is what loosely can be called the Third-and-8 Standard. That is, if he’s facing a third-and-8 situation, can this quarterback drop back, find a receiver who may or may not be open, and deliver a strong and accurate pass for a first down? And can he do it again? And again? And again?

This standard, coincidentally, sometimes is cited as a reason that Hurts is not necessarily regarded as a “top-tier” quarterback, and there’s some validity to that argument, at least to this point in Hurts’ career. Generally speaking, the more passes he has thrown, the worse the outcomes have been for the Eagles. (I know, I know. Teams throw the ball more when they’re trailing, there’s a chicken-or-egg aspect to this trend, etc.)

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Here’s the thing about the Eagles: They don’t have to rely on Hurts to throw the ball in those third-and-8s as often as other teams have to rely on their quarterbacks to throw it. The Eagles are comfortable handing the ball to Barkley, having Hurts carry the ball himself, or having Hurts attempt a pass short of the first-down marker. There are two big reasons they’ve afforded themselves so much flexibility in those moments.

One, they’ve spent the last eight or nine years demonstrating that going for it on fourth down should never have been the taboo that it used to be. It’s not always reckless. Often, it’s smart.

Two, they know they have an excellent chance of gaining yardage, getting first downs, and scoring touchdowns through their running game. The team that threw the ball less frequently than any other in the NFL last season put up 95 combined points in the NFC championship game and Super Bowl, winning each in a rout. Whether it’s the Tush Push or a long Barkley dash to the end zone, they’ve made the most basic and brutal aspect of a basic and brutal sport cool again.

Ask their newest running back AJ Dillon, whom the Eagles signed in March.

“It’s one of those things where you’re in a game and you’re obviously watching your little iPad when the defense is out there,” Dillon said Tuesday. “But eventually, you see the running backs on the other side doing their thing, and you’re like, ‘Damn.’ … When free agency came around, it was like, ‘What do you think about the Eagles?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, that sounds great!’”

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Of course it did. That’s still the essence of football. Our biggest guys will put their hands on your biggest guys, and a couple of our fastest and strongest guys will run with the ball, and there’s nothing you can do about it. The Eagles rough you up better than anyone in the NFL. The burden of proof is on their opponents to show that they can go toe to toe with them. A small moment Tuesday. A bigger message.