David Murphy: The Eagles need A.J. Brown, which means they need him happy. But he needs to do his part, too.

PHILADELPHIA — This is one of those situations where everybody is a little bit wrong and a little bit right. That’s usually how it goes with conundrums. Problems with easy solutions don’t stay problems long.

A.J. Brown has been a problem for a while now. I don’t mean that in an existential sense. There is no capital P. At least, not yet. The Eagles need to make sure the CAPSLOCK stays off. It’s their biggest priority right now. Bigger than beating the Lions, even.

Before we dive into the overarching argument — that the Eagles need to force feed Brown — allow me to defend that last contention. I don’t want to diminish what the Eagles can gain with a win over Detroit on Sunday. They’ve checked off the other boxes. The Los Angeles Rams, the Green Bay Packers, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

(Apologies to the Seahawks, who still have two games against the Rams, plus one each against the Colts and 49ers. They’ve played two games against six-win teams. They’ve lost them both. They’ve beaten the Steelers and Jaguars on the road. So, congrats for that. The Bears have played an even easier schedule. The Eagles won’t have a problem when they host Chicago in a couple of weeks.)

At 8-2 with two games against the Commanders plus the Raiders and the Cowboys remaining, the Eagles would be sitting at 12 wins even before you divvy up the Bears, Chargers, and Bills. So, yes. Beating the Lions is a big thing. But it isn’t the main thing. Not in these circumstances. Not when you consider where the Eagles want to go and who they need to get there.

It sounds strange. Counterintuitive. Offensive to one’s competitive sensibilities. But tell me where I’m wrong. The Eagles can lose to the Lions on Sunday and still win a Super Bowl. But they won’t win one if they can’t find a way to make their All-Pro wide receiver an active participant in their offense. The Eagles need Brown. Which means they need him happy.

You certainly can disagree with that last sequence of statements. You can point to their win over the Giants a couple of weeks ago, when the Eagles put up season highs in yards and points with Brown on the sideline with a hamstring injury. But the game film would disagree. The Eagles rushed for 254 yards. Jalen Hurts attempted 20 passes. Only three of those passes went to a wide receiver not named DeVonta Smith.

The question isn’t whether the Eagles can beat a sorry Giants team without Brown. The question is whether they would have beaten the Rams or the Vikings without Brown. The answer is no. They wouldn’t have. Without Brown’s 10 catches, 230 yards and three touchdowns in those two games, the Eagles would be 5-4 and looking at this week’s Lions game in a completely different light.

I don’t think anybody inside the Eagles organization would disagree. Nor do I think it is any one person’s fault that Brown enters Week 11 on a Titans-esque 17-game pace of 66 catches and 867 yards.

I don’t blame Nick Sirianni for feeling exasperated by this latest round of questions about Brown, who got a little huffy on a Twitch stream on Tuesday. I don’t blame the media for asking the questions. I don’t blame Brown for feeling huffy. This is how it goes when things go the way they’ve gone this season.

The key is to make sure it doesn’t go any further. And the onus for that is on everybody who is involved. Brown’s absence from the Eagles offense in their 10-7 win over the Packers on Monday — three targets, two catches — was both conspicuous and easy to explain. The Eagles aren’t running the ball as well as they did last season, which means they are getting fewer first downs, which means they are running fewer plays, which means every play that doesn’t result in an opportunity for Brown is magnified. There were some opportunities there on Monday night.

The defense took one of them away and freed up Devonta Smith for a game-breaking touchdown. Jalen Hurts chose another option on another play, sailing a pass to Grant Calcaterra that might’ve gone for a touchdown. Hurts scrambled too early on another play where he had Brown clearing for a gain of 25-plus yards. On another play, the pass rush got to him a split second early. Hurts attempted only 26 passes. The missed opportunities add up.

“A.J. Brown is one of the best wide receivers in the NFL, so of course we’re trying to get him involved in the game every single time,” Sirianni said this week. “Sometimes, it goes like it did in the Rams game or the Vikings game, and sometimes it goes like it did in this last game.”

Add all of that up over nine games, and you have your answer. The Eagles have played a lot of really good defenses. They play a style of football that is unlike any other team’s in the NFL. As a result, they limit their turnovers. They also limit their higher-risk throws, which often are the throws on which All-Pro receivers differentiate themselves.

Brown understands this, which is why his grumbling can feel so volatile. He gets frustrated, as any of us would. Sometimes, he can’t help himself from expressing that frustration. But he realizes why things are they way they are and that life is a lot better than it would be in Tennessee.

Brown needs to be better. More mindful. More aware of the pressure that he puts on his play caller and quarterback when they feel like they need to cater toward an individual player rather than letting the main thing be a W over the Lions.

But, then, Brown is who he is. The important thing is that the Eagles need it. And, right now, they need to throw him a bone. More than three, anyway.