PHILADELPHIA — So I have these two friends — great friends, practically-my-brother friends, bail-ya-out-of-jail friends. (Why would I be in jail, you ask? Let’s just say that, in my house, you won’t find a mattress with its tag still attached.) Both men are sports fans — not just fans, but knowledgeable followers of sports. And both of them follow the Philadelphia Eagles.

So much for their similarities. Now, to the differences between them.

Friend 1 is a Philadelphia native. He has lived in this area his entire life: birth, high school, college, middle age. Friend 1 is the bigger Eagles fan of the two. As such, whenever the Eagles are playing and he knows I’m covering them that day, Friend 1 texts me throughout the game. The frequency of those messages increases, and their tone intensifies, whenever the Eagles drop a pass or miss a tackle or get the wrong end of an official’s bad call. Friend 1 tends to use a lot of question marks, exclamation points and expletives in his texts. (Friend 1 also tends to forget that I have to pay close attention to the game for … you know … my job. But like I said, he’ll be there for me when the Tempur-Pedic police finally knock on my door. So he’s forgiven, now and forever.)

Friend 2 grew up in another town, one with a traditionally strong NFL franchise, then lived in Philadelphia and its suburbs for several years before moving again to another city. Friend 2 does not text me during Eagles games. He texts me after Eagles games, and his texts usually sound like the one he sent me Tuesday morning, roughly 10 hours after the Eagles had beaten the Green Bay Packers, 10-7, at Lambeau Field:

“Do Eagles fans know how good they have it right now?”

I’m not sure they do. Some of them do, of course. You might even say many of them do. Those fans are looking at the Eagles as they are now — seven victories in nine games this season, the best record in the NFC, 23 victories in their last 26 games, a Super Bowl win just nine months ago — and are relishing this chance to live through the best period in their favorite team’s history.

But there’s no denying that there remains a large segment of the fan base still wallowing in the worry, the dissatisfaction and the reflexive complaining that have characterized Philly sports fandom for time immemorial. The notion that having a genuinely great franchise in town would relieve at least some of that collective angst now seems naive at best.

Listen. Scroll. Chat with family and neighbors and casual acquaintances. I would bet all the crypto in the Winklevoss twins’ portfolios that the prevailing feeling around the Delaware Valley on Tuesday wasn’t joy or happiness or even relief. I would bet it was frustration. Frustration that the Eagles scored just 10 points in the game. Frustration that they tried a deep pass to A.J. Brown on a late fourth-down call that could have put the game away. Frustration that there was some doubt as to whether the Eagles would win.

Which they did.

Which they usually do.

Which, one would think, would earn them the benefit of the doubt.

Here’s a theory for why it doesn’t: Philadelphia sports fans are so provincial and parochial and have such tunnel vision that they often evaluate their teams, the Eagles now especially, based on an incredibly high, context-free standard. They want and expect perfection. They want and expect a stress-free victory every time out.

They forget that what the Eagles did in winning last season’s NFC championship game and Super Bowl, outscoring the Washington Commanders and Kansas City Chiefs by a combined 95-29 over those games’ first seven quarters and 12 minutes, is not normal. They are judging this team against itself, not against the other 31 teams in the NFL. And while the Eagles say they try to hold themselves to such a lofty baseline for excellence, those diehards who do the same will find themselves miserable and disappointed over outcomes that other fans in other markets would love to experience.

Look around. The three other teams in the Eagles’ division — the Commanders, the New York Giants and the Dallas Cowboys — have spent this season, and much of their recent histories, setting themselves on fire. For all the exasperation that Nick Sirianni, his behavior, and his in-game decision-making inspires — and hey, I’ve expressed some of that exasperation — his resume so far speaks for itself: a 55-22 regular-season record, a 6-3 postseason record, two Super Bowl appearances, one championship, and a 7-2 record this season with tiebreaker victories over three conference contenders: the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Los Angeles Rams and the Packers.

Look around. Would you want to be the Seattle Seahawks, counting on Sam Darnold to deliver in the playoffs? Would you want to be the Rams, whose number the Eagles apparently have and whose head coach, Sean McVay, has a habit of getting uber-conservative with his play-calling in the games and moments that matter most? Would you want to be any team in the NFC South?

Look around. That was Friend 2’s point. That was his perspective as someone who has spent significant time outside the Philadelphia area, who has some useful distance here, who isn’t twisting his insides into a pretzel over every Jalen Hurts incompletion or every inside handoff on third-and-12. I’m not suggesting the Eagles are above criticism or concern; Brown’s diminished relevance in the offense and his reaction to it, for instance, are certainly worth monitoring. But I am suggesting that it’s exhausting and unnecessary to volley between outrage and apprehension when you have it this good.

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