On the first day of Eagles training camp, Jalen Hurts lofted a pass down the left sideline toward A.J. Brown. Cornerback Kelee Ringo played the ball perfectly. Ringo, basically linked arm-in-arm with the Eagles’ premier receiver, looked back at just the right moment to deflect or intercept. Except that Brown then shouldered Ringo aside, reaching over him to pluck the ball cleanly before stepping out of bounds.
The moment illustrated several things about the 2025 Eagles, defending Super Bowl champions.
One, their stars are among the NFL’s most dominant at their respective positions—they don’t need an opponent to fall down or make a mistake in order to make a play; they will make a play just because they are better than you.
The second thing the scene illustrated, though, is that the incredible roster general manager Howie Roseman has built—the roster that blew away the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX—might have developed a few holes in the offseason, as inevitably happens with Super Bowl champions. Ringo began training camp as the heir apparent to a much more accomplished corner, Darius Slay, gone in free agency to Pittsburgh. Slay’s 2024 backup, veteran corner Isaiah Rodgers, likewise departed, to Minnesota. Ringo, a 2023 fourth-round draft pick, played just 11% of the Eagles’ defensive snaps last season.
Roseman hedged his bet on Ringo by signing veteran Adoree Jackson, a former first-round pick of the Titans who’d been playing for the Giants, but Jackson certainly has never been a Slay-level corner, and you could argue that he hasn’t been even as good as Rodgers.
So, a few weeks into camp, Roseman traded a promising defensive tackle, Thomas Booker, to the Raiders for corner Jakorian Bennett, with the clear understanding that the starting corner spot opposite Quinyon Mitchell now would be a three-way competition.
This idea of maybe being able to quickly make up for a misstep with a subsequent move brings us back to Brown, and one of the reasons the Eagles are so good.
In 2020, Roseman made one of the all-time draft mistakes in franchise history, selecting wide receiver Jalen Reagor 21st overall in the first round, just before Minnesota drafted future All-Pro Justin Jefferson. Then the Eagles went 4-11-1 in 2020, as Carson Wentz, the quarterback Roseman had signed to a four-year, $128 million contract extension a year earlier, was benched.
Wentz demanded a trade and head coach Doug Pederson was fired, three years after becoming the first Eagles coach to win a Super Bowl. Roseman was forced to trade Wentz to Indianapolis, incurring what was at the time the largest dead salary cap hit in NFL history. Observers wondered if the end of Roseman’s tenure might be in sight.
But Roseman used part of the draft pick haul he got for Wentz to trade up in the 2021 draft, taking wideout DeVonta Smith. A year later he used draft picks to trade with Tennessee for Brown. Wideout problem solved. The Eagles have never had a pair of wide receivers the equal of Brown and Smith.
The Brown trade ended up being a disaster for the Titans. They got the 18th and 101st overall picks in the 2022 draft, and used the first-rounder to draft Treylon Burks, a wide receiver they projected as Brown’s successor.
Brown has surpassed 1,000 receiving yards in each of his three Eagles seasons, and has appeared in two Super Bowls, winning one. Burks broke his collarbone and went on injured reserve this summer. Injuries have helped limit him to 53 catches for 699 yards and a TD in three Tennessee seasons. Jon Robinson, the Titans general manager who made the trade, was fired at the end of the 2022 season.
“If I had a do-over, I’d be an idiot to sit here and say, ‘No, I’d do it again.’ No, you’d do it different,” Robinson said in a radio interview this summer. “But we made the decision that we made and the rest is what it is.”
Brown, meanwhile, told a podcast this summer: “I’m glad this happened, because I felt like I was meant to shine. We needed a big team with a big market, and I think this is the right place and the best fit for me. I am a little sad for Treylon Burks. I wish he could get healthy, because he is a good kid. I talked to him numerous times; I’ve got his number. And it sucks to see it go down like that.”
At times during his Eagles tenure, media reports have tried to fit Brown into the “diva wide receiver” mold, probably because that is how people expect a dominant wideout to behave. Brown seems much more complex, in the midst of his seventh NFL season, at age 28.
His sideline reading last season of the book Inner Excellence, originally interpreted as indicating disrespect to teammates or lack of interest in the game, ended up spurring sales of the book to Eagles fans, after Brown explained how it had helped him.
Brown was a commencement speaker at his alma mater, Ole Miss, this spring. He held a youth football camp this summer at Haddonfield Memorial High School, the day before the 2024 Eagles got their Super Bowl rings. Rodgers, in the area for the ring ceremony, attended and told The Inquirer it was a “no-brainer” to support a veteran who helped him feel welcome when he joined the team, fresh from a one-year NFL suspension for violating gambling rules.
Not really diva-type stuff.
“I truly feel like I’m the best in the league, and I want to put a stamp on it,” Brown said when Eagles camp opened. “So, I’m definitely motivated. But also, I have to put the team first. That’s what I do, honestly. I could go into it deeper, but I think that’s what I’m focused on. Being the best version of myself and proving it, each and every day, that I am the best.”
Brown, a Haddonfield resident, said he wants to be the best “by my measurement. It’s not what the critics say. ... That’s for me, personally. God placed that in my heart when I came into the league. [He] told me that I could be the best in the league. I think, right now, I’m closer than I’ve ever been, and I want to put a stamp on it. That’s for me. I don’t care what anyone else says, that’s personal, for me. That’s what I’m chasing, every day.”
Brown missed four games because of injury last year. He recently revealed that he had his knee drained twice a week during the second half of the season, including right before the Super Bowl, in which he caught a touchdown pass, while playing 88% of the offensive snaps.
Injury might be the biggest obstacle to the Eagles defending their title. As is often the case with Super Bowl winners, they avoided season-altering mishaps to their biggest stars en route to winning the franchise’s second Lombardi Trophy. But because they didn’t get the NFC’s top seed and its first-round bye, the Eagles ended up playing 21 games last season, which amounted to an extraordinary amount of wear and tear, and an offseason more than a month shorter than those of teams that didn’t go to the playoffs.
The Eagles started training camp with 10 returning starters on offense, having lost Mekhi Becton to free agency. Still, the offensive personnel, including 2,005-yard running back Saquon Barkley, would seem the equal of any in the NFL.
Defensively it’s trickier. Last year was Vic Fangio’s first as the defensive coordinator, and his unit steadily got better all season, dominating Kansas City in the Super Bowl. Then Roseman, under salary cap pressure, didn’t feel the need to keep Slay, edge rusher Josh Sweat, defensive tackle Milton Williams, linebacker Oren Burks or safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson.
Roseman did focus on defense in the draft, and he kept standout linebacker Zack Baun from leaving in free agency, but the overall talent level of the defense might be a bit lower; the edge rush situation seems to involve quite a bit of projection. At midseason 2024, nobody would have thought having Nolan Smith and Jalyx Hunt as the starters would be anything other than a disaster. Smith, in his second season, and Hunt, a rookie, came on strong down the stretch, but still, they have short resumes, and the players behind them are even less well-vetted.
The Eagles’ best defensive scenario is probably for defensive tackle Jalen Carter to blossom into an every-down disrupter, a no-doubt league defensive player of the year sort. And for Baun and Mitchell to also play pretty much at that level.
What’s going to happen this season? Well, the Eagles have been to five Super Bowls in their history. The first four appearances were followed by disappointing seasons, with no return trips. But none of those squads was as loaded with dominant, career-prime talent as this one.
Among many other things, the Eagles have never gone into a post-Super Bowl season with a long-term starting quarterback like Hurts, a QB who’d made multiple starring appearances on the sport’s biggest stage. And the last time they had a receiver as dominant as Brown, Terrell Owens pretty much singlehandedly detonated the Eagles’ chances to get back to the Super Bowl by waging open war with quarterback Donovan McNabb and the organization over Owens’ contract.
The culture, the leadership group of this team seems so much stronger, with Brown being a big part of that.
“It’s rare to see a guy that’s had the accolades that he’s had, that’s accomplished the things he’s accomplished still come in with the same mindset, with the work ethic he has,” Barkley said last season, when asked about Brown. Barkley became the focus of the offense, in his first season with the team, leading to speculation that Brown was dissatisfied or frustrated with his role.
“I know it’s not (selfishness) at all,” Barkley said. “He works hard. He puts a lot of effort in this. He wants to ball out. ... You [won’t] hear no one in this locker room say anything negative about him.”
Really, there isn’t much negative anyone can say about the 2025 Eagles, at least for now.
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Published and copyrighted in South Jersey Magazine, Volume 22, Issue 6 (September 2025)
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