Philadelphia Eagles: 5 Reasons they’ll make the playoffs in 2018
By Carl Naimoli
1. The Fight to Repeat
As I mentioned on the last page the Super Bowl hangover is real, unless your the New England Patriots. Aside from the Patriots, in the last 20 years only two teams who won the Super Bowl the year before were able to even reach that game the next season. They are the 2014 Seahawks and 1998 Broncos.
It’s easy for teams to not have the fight and will to succeed the year after winning a championship. After all, it’s just human nature that once you’ve reached the pinnacle that you may not have that edge anymore that got you there in the first place.
But this Eagles team seems different. They weren’t expected to win the Super Bowl entering last season. It didn’t take them years and years of getting ever so close, only to come up short in the end. They came out of nowhere and surprised everybody. That’s an advantage for them this season because they don’t have the wear and tear on their bodies that a team fighting for championships every year tends to have.
They have a great mix of young and veteran talent, and most importantly they have great leadership. With Jason Peters, Malcolm Jenkins and Carson Wentz it’s really hard to imagine this team slowing down or letting up. Instead this team seems like it’s ready and willing to take on the responsibility of being the hunted instead of the hunters.
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The core of this team is too talented and mentally strong for their to be a letdown. Instead they want to do what no team has done since the 2004-05 Patriots and win back-to-back Super Bowls. If things all click like it did last year, expect these Eagles to have another parade down Broad Street.