The Eagles, in handing win to Titans, show once more it’s a new season, with new ups … and downs | Mike Sielski

NASHVILLE – Once the football settled into Corey Davis' hands and the Eagles' collapse was complete Sunday, all of his Tennessee Titans teammates and coaches rushed toward him in a wave, the type of celebration usually reserved for a college team that has upset a national powerhouse.

In the stands of Nissan Stadium, Titans fans flapped their arms in faux Eagles chants to taunt the hundreds who had made the trip here from the Philadelphia area, and the circumstances of the Eagles' 26-23 overtime loss and the scene afterward were so unfamiliar during and after that 2017-18 Super Bowl season. The Eagles had lost, of course. They lost three times last season, and they lost two weeks ago in Tampa. But they had not lost like this in a long time. They had not given away a game in nearly two years, and now, at 2-2, they have to reckon with the potential ramifications of having a victory in their grasp and letting it go.

In 2016, when coach Doug Pederson and Carson Wentz were both rookies, the Eagles finished 7-9, and the difference between finishing with a losing record and perhaps making a play for a playoff berth were two heartbreaking losses on the road.

In the first, in Week 4, the Eagles committed 14 penalties and Ryan Mathews lost a late-game fumble that led to the winning field goal in a one-point loss to the Lions in Detroit. Three weeks later, against the Cowboys, the Eagles held a 10-point fourth-quarter lead before Pederson went conservative, calling plays as if he were scared to lose, and the Cowboys rallied to win in overtime.

Instead of being 6-1 through seven games that season, the Eagles were 4-3, and if those two results weren't the cause of a midseason stretch that saw the Eagles lose nine times in 11 weeks, they were at least an indication that the team wasn't quite ready to compete for a championship.

"It's not going to snowball that way," Pederson said, and he had the confidence to make such an assertion because the Eagles never experienced such adversity last season. They lost in Kansas City in Week 2 at a point when the Chiefs were an objectively better team. They lost in Seattle, always a difficult setting for a visiting opponent, when the Seahawks were desperate to save their season. And they lost, while resting their starters, to Dallas in a meaningless regular-season finale. Otherwise, they met the measure of every big moment.

>> READ MORE: Eagles' issues in the secondary go beyond Jalen Mills in loss to Titans | Jeff McLane

Sunday was different: a 17-3 third-quarter lead vanishing by the time the fourth quarter was 10 minutes old, two drives that ended in field goals when a touchdown would have won the game, a succession of penalties and breakdowns on defense that allowed Marcus Mariota to orchestra that overtime drive and find Davis for that 10-yard jump-ball TD pass.

There has been a sloppiness to the Eagles' two losses this season that didn't manifest itself last season, and if they don't clean things up by next Sunday, when they play the Minnesota Vikings, then it really will be time to understand that the slate was wiped clean once Jason Kelce and his Mummers costume descended that parade stage.

>> READ MORE: Who's trending up, who's trending down? Winners and losers from Sunday's loss

"The talent we have keeps it from snowballing, I hope," tight end Zach Ertz said. "The mind-set we have in this locker room keeps it from snowballing, I hope. We're a bunch of guys who have a very workmanlike attitude each and every day we come into the building. We're not going to let one win or one loss affect our season, affect our mind-set."

Yes, they aren't the same team that they were in 2016, but that's the point. The challenge in evaluating the Eagles this season is the natural tendency to view everything through the prism of last season. They are, after all, Defending Super Bowl Champions, a title they have never held before, and with that title come particular obstacles.

>> READ MORE: Offensive line can't protect Carson Wentz, allows four more sacks in loss to Titans

It's not just that they have faced and will face their opponents' best efforts, that every opposing crowd will treat a win over the Eagles like Appalachian State taking down Michigan or Chaminade over the University of Virginia. It's that every NFL season is an entity in and of itself. What happened in one year does not necessarily carry over to the next. That doesn't mean that these Eagles are certain to be a disappointment. It just means that this season will not be last season, which wasn't the 2016 season.

"Obviously, this is one of those where we felt like we should have won," safety Malcolm Jenkins said. "But I think we have too much leadership and too much focus to allow mistakes or an experience from one game to carry over to the next or make us change our minds about who we are as players or as a team."

Jenkins and Pederson and the rest of the Eagles can think it. But after Sunday, after the kind of loss and surreal scene that never tainted the magic of 2017, they also bear the burden of proving it.

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