Philadelphia Eagles top CBS Sports’ NFL power rankings

Here’s an interesting prospect for Philadelphia Eagles fans. ‘The Birds’ might be better in 2018 than they were a season ago.

We live in a stat-obsessed world. We’ve fallen in love with sites like Pro Football Focus. A good number of the American population plays fantasy football. We love rankings. Nowadays, we don’t even have to wait for the regular season. In the case of the typical Philadelphia Eagles fan, one of the most overwhelming thoughts has been how this version of the Eagles might stack up against the one that raised the Lombardi Trophy just this past February.

If they intend to do that again, they’ll need to be better than the rest of the NFL again. That includes the up-and-coming Los Angeles Rams. Then, there’s a few teams with good quarterbacks who will, no doubt, gear up for another title run in 2018, the New Orleans Saints, Minnesota Vikings and Atlanta Falcons. That’s just a list of who they might run into in the NFC.

There’s a good possibility whoever comes out of the NFC could run into a pesky New England Patriots team that never seems to go away.

CBS Sports shows love to ‘The Birds’.

The dust is, now, settling from free agency and the draft, and everyone’s appetite for the NFL regular season is approaching. You guessed it. That means more of those rankings are coming. As if seeing Philly top the NFL Network’s post-draft rankings wasn’t exciting enough, another reliable source, Pete Prisco of CBSSports.com recently dropped a power ranking of his own. The Eagles found their way to the top of that one as well.

Here’s some of what was said:

"The team that won the Super Bowl with a backup quarterback, without their starting left tackle and starting middle linebacker, has improved from the group that beat New England…Howie Roseman, the team’s general manager, has done a masterful job this offseason of making his team better…the reason the Eagles will be better is simply getting Wentz back. Nick Foles did a nice job in leading the Eagles to the Super Bowl victory, but he isn’t Wentz. The Eagles are much better with a healthy Wentz – even if the Eagles fans might not feel that way once he struggles for a quarter or so this season."

This season’s a little different from the others. Never have the Eagles gone into the regular season as the defending Super Bowl champions. They’ll be targeted and have the bulls eye on their back, but in all honesty, it doesn’t appear that any of the other teams in the NFC, with the exception of the Rams and Saints, have done enough to dethrone the champs.

Next: Jonathan Stewart seems to have forgotten the Eagles won the Super Bowl

Games are won on the football field, not in the press, so we’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, it’s good to see that, now, the Eagles are finally getting their due. All it took was a divisional title, clinching the top spot in the playoffs, beating two of the best teams in their conference and, then, dethroning the greatest dynasty in the history of the NFL.

They’re officially the top dogs now.