The Eagles’ past helps them sell kelly green jerseys. The Eagles’ present is better in every way.

There were two pieces of news that bookended the Eagles’ week, and there was a connection between them, even if it wasn’t immediately apparent.

Let’s take the first story first. I don’t know if you’ve heard this, because it got virtually no media coverage in these parts, but the Eagles announced that, in two games this season, their players will wear replicas of the kelly green jerseys that were the team’s primary uniform style from 1985 to 1995. The jerseys went on sale last Monday. And if you were one of the lucky ones to get your apparel before Fanatics — a company that seems to specialize in underestimating the passion and purchasing power of Philadelphia sports fans — ran out of merchandise, you could ensconce yourself in the warm memories of that decade of Eagles football.

Now, to keep it real, there were only so many such memories. Over those 11 seasons, the Eagles finished above .500 just six times and won just one playoff game. But nostalgia sells, and the best of those teams benefited from some favorable circumstances that allow them to be remembered well to this day.

Those Eagles had a braggadocious coach in Buddy Ryan and an often-breathtaking quarterback in Randall Cunningham, sure, and they became relevant just as sports talk radio was emerging as a dominant medium in this market. But more appealing to the guttural core of football fans here was this: Those teams were built around great, nasty defenses with great, nasty players: Reggie White, Jerome Brown, Clyde Simmons, Andre Waters, Wes Hopkins. An Eagles defense from the late 1980s and early 1990s was an 11-man forearm shiver, and its linebackers were considered invaluable to its brutality and effectiveness: Seth Joyner, Byron Evans, William Thomas, among others.

» READ MORE: Ranking the 50 greatest Eagles players of all time

Now for the second piece of news. The Eagles revealed Sunday, a few hours before their open practice at Lincoln Financial Field, that they had signed two veteran linebackers: Myles Jack and Zach Cunningham. Both of them agreed to one-year contracts — the kind of plug-a-hole or add-some-depth move that has become one of Howie Roseman’s trademarks. Neither Jack nor Cunningham is a player on the rise. They are veterans who were available because their previous teams decided they weren’t worth keeping around. So Roseman made a calculated bet that the Eagles can milk some good football out of Jack and Cunningham this season to fortify a position that could use some fortifying.

Those two team-building philosophies couldn’t be more disparate. The first says, Great linebackers are an intrinsic part of who the Philadelphia Eagles are. The second says, If we stumble into terrific linebacker play at the right price, cool.

Anyone who has paid close attention to the changes in the NFL since the twin dawns of free agency and the salary cap in 1993-94 understands why the Eagles evolved in their thinking. The sport became more pass-oriented, which in turn compelled coaches and player-personnel executives — the astute ones, anyway — to recognize that certain positions were more valuable than others. Because the cap limits what each team can spend, a savvy franchise allocates more money and resources toward those more valuable positions: quarterback, offensive line, defensive line, cornerback, wide receiver. Linebacker, in this era, isn’t one of them.

» READ MORE: Eagles agree to terms with veteran linebackers Zach Cunningham, Myles Jack, make other roster moves

This history lesson might seem like Pro Football 101, and to those who immerse themselves in all things NFL, it is. Or should be.

“[The] Eagles have been doing this for 25 years,” former team president Joe Banner, perhaps hungry for a little credit for the franchise’s approach, posted Sunday on Twitter. “In a copycat league it’s very surprising how few teams have copied this and how much team building philosophy has benefited [the] Eagles. Some teams like the Bears are actually doing the opposite.”

Banner’s right about the Bears. The franchise of Dick Butkus, Mike Singletary, and Brian Urlacher spent big on linebacking in free agency last spring, signing Tremaine Edmunds to a four-year contract worth as much as $72 million and giving former Eagle T.J. Edwards a three-year deal that could top out at $19.5 million. Decisions like those explain why the Bears have celebrated three winning seasons and one postseason victory since 2007.

Tradition — an old-school way of thinking, or maybe a franchise aligning itself with a certain identity and never abandoning it — can be a hard habit to break. In his role as an Eagles postgame analyst for NBC Sports Philadelphia and JAKIB Media, for instance, Joyner routinely laments what he perceives to be a lack of aggressiveness in the team’s defense, and Jonathan Gannon’s two seasons here as the unit’s coordinator were marked by the steady drumbeat of He doesn’t blitz enough, even as the Eagles were setting a team record for sacks. I suspect there are still plenty of fans who pine for the kelly green years of the past, for the way the team dressed and for the way it played. But the Eagles are better and smarter now than they were then. These are the good old days for this franchise, and you don’t need to mail-order a Bubby Brister jersey to remind yourself of that.