I got this great pair of questions the morning after the Eagles hammered the Kansas City Chiefs to win their second Super Bowl, and I couldn’t wait to write about them.

Reader mscbuck asked the following

One of my favorite things to talk about post Super Bowl:

1. What are the things that teams around the league are going to overindex on with the Eagles SB Win? (I could see a push for "see having a stud RB wins a SB!", as an example)

2. What are the things that the teams are going to be at fault for potentially ignoring/underrating about the Eagles SB win?

People always try to copy what the champions are doing, so I think it's always interesting to discuss the things that maybe the Eagles are doing that other teams SHOULD copy, vs. the things that a team really shouldn't attempt to try without the personnel.

These questions get at the threefold truth of the NFL:

1. The NFL is a copycat league

2. There’s no better team to copy than the team that won the Super Bowl

3. People are going to learn the wrong lessons from whoever they’re trying to copy more often than not

So what are the wrong things that people will learn from the Eagles? And what should they be doing instead?

Don’t build your team around a running back just because it worked for the Eagles

I think mscbuck gets right to the most obvious wrong lesson here: people are going to over-value running backs because of what they saw from Saquon Barkley and the Eagles this year.

Don’t read this as a criticism of Barkley or the Eagles. He and they were incredible this season, and both Barkley and his incredible offensive line deserve all the kudos they can get for his incredible run this season. But I don’t think his success is going to be copy-able for most teams in the NFL, especially those trying to build from the ground up.

If you were a struggling NFL team, the worst thing you could do is try to be the Eagles right away. The Eagles have been building to this for a while. They’ve carefully and consistently invested in their offensive line, they have a playcaller that can pair their gifted runner of a quarterback with their all-world running back, and they have the other pieces in place (namely, two dynamite receivers) to take pressure off the running game. The Eagles were not just Saquon Barkley; they were an entire offense full of high-level players at nearly every position.

I know “get good players” is not a fun strategy to talk about. “Your team just needs to have better players and then your team will be better” doesn’t generate clicks from fans whose teams came up short this year. But it’s the truth, by and large. The Eagles were good on offense this year because they were awash with talent everywhere. Barkley was the headline, but the story was one of long-term, careful development and investment.

Don’t just sign a trendy defensive coordinator and expect to get better on defense

Similarly, Vic Fangio is going to get a ton of credit for the Eagles’ masterful dominance over the Chiefs’ offense, but that’s missing the forest for one very reputable tree. Fangio deserves credit; we haven’t had a league-wide discussion about the “Fangio system” for going on a decade now because he’s bad at his job. But the Vic Fangio defense hinged on great performances from great players.

Here’s a quick and possibly unfair summary of what I mean. Fangio looked like a genius on Sunday when his defensive line got pressure without much help from blitzers. But laying aside what’s happening in the secondary, if your defensive line is so good that it can harass an all-time great quarterback into one of the worst games of his life without blitz support, chances are they were going to get after him no matter what plays they were calling. That’s not scheme dominance. That’s dominant players doing what dominant players do.

Like the Eagles’ offense, this defensive performance was the result of long-term investment. The Eagles have spent five top-100 picks on defensive linemen and edge rushers over the past four seasons, as I outlined in this piece at Acme Packing Company. That’s why their defensive line is good: they’ve been spending big on it, and it paid off on the biggest stage.

Similarly, the Eagles have shelled out for talent in the secondary. They traded for Darius Slay a few years back and he’s paid back the investment many times over. Then, last spring, they drafted two talented young defensive backs, selecting Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean in the first and second round, respectively. They paid for good players and got good performances.

Sure, Fangio being a defensive genius helps. It helps a lot! But it also helps when you’ve got really good players making really big plays.

Do keep investing premium picks at premium positions

But in both the offensive and defensive blueprints show us the ways people can learn some pointers from the Eagles. No, it won’t be quick or easy, but there’s a path to follow here.

The Eagles have consistently invested high-value picks on the defensive line — a recipe that’s going to breed success sooner or later in the numbers game that is the draft. They’ve done the same on wide receivers, spending a first round pick on Devonta Smith in 2021 and then doing the same (via trade) a year later to get A.J. Brown. They’ve also spent big in their defensive backfield.

What do all of these areas have in common? They need a lot of bodies to make them go. Whether they need them or not, the Eagles hammer these positions again and again and again, building the depth and talent that carried them to a Super Bowl.

That, I think, is the real lesson here. Keep investing, be patient, and spend most of your time and effort on the positions that demand the most investment to matter. It’s boring, and it’ll rarely win you the offseason press conference battle, but it got the Eagles a Super Bowl. Maybe it could do the same for the Packers.