Here we are at the playoff party, and the Eagles don't have an invite.
Cullen Jenkins was part of last summer's free-agency frenzy that brought Nnamdi Asomugha and a boatload of lauded veterans to Philly, enough to tip the scales of the NFC in the team's favor, according to many.
Many were wrong.
Unlike Vince Young, Jenkins, coming off a Super Bowl win with the Packers, wouldn't have been caught dead labeling the Eagles a "Dream Team" before winning a game that meant anything.
"There were definitely red flags," the defensive tackle told the team's official website Monday. "A lot of people see Super Bowl, or I think they let the fact that the Super Bowl is there, and so many people talk about it right away. You can hear people nowadays, they come out of the draft talking about Super Bowl, and I think it kind of gets thrown around too loosely now.
"It's obviously the ultimate goal in where you want to get to, but you have to understand that you have to work hard. It's something that is a process and you have to take it each step at a time to get to it, and I think a lot of time, people just want to jump from preseason to the Super Bowl without doing what it takes in between."
Jenkins wasn't pointing fingers at the Eagles with that "in between" reference. Philly's strange soup of veterans was forced to mesh without the benefit of a full offseason, something that might help this team reach its potential next season -- one that will begin minus the fanfare and heavy presumption about what a new campaign will bring.
