The Eagles aren’t going to make it easy this season. Get used to these hard victories.

There could be no better testament to the talent that the Eagles have assembled this season than their first two games: both of them victories, neither of them easy, each with enough questionable decisions to make you scratch a bald spot into your scalp.

The Eagles beat the Vikings, 34-28, on Thursday night, but what we’re seeing so far is what everyone should have expected from this team. A smooth and joyful ride to the Super Bowl one year doesn’t mean the trip is going to be bump-less the next. They’re 2-0, and that’s as good as they can be record-wise. Performance-wise … well, that’s another matter. The word sloppy came up a few times between their 25-20 win over the Patriots last Sunday and kickoff Thursday night, and it probably ought to come up a few more times in the aftermath of this one.

“Obviously,” coach Nick Sirianni said, “we didn’t play our cleanest game.”

» READ MORE: D’Andre Swift dominates and the defense is opportunistic as the Birds win 34-28

It doesn’t take much to understand why frustration might be on the rise around the Eagles, despite these first two outcomes. Everyone knows and can see that the Patriots and the Vikings have their limitations. That New England offense won’t be scaring many opponents this season, and the Vikings are a notoriously squirrelly team, usually less than the sum of their parts, and they lived up to that reputation Thursday, losing four fumbles, handing the Eagles one scoring opportunity after another — opportunities that, for too long, the Eagles seemed reluctant to accept.

“With four turnovers,” center Jason Kelce said, “that game shouldn’t have been close.”

Mostly, it seems the Eagles, offensive coordinator and play-caller Brian Johnson in particular, are overthinking things. For all the praise that people around the NFL heap on the Eagles — and the Eagles sometimes heap on themselves — for their boldness on fourth down and their forward thinking, the secret to their success is football at its most basic: Build your roster around the offensive and defensive lines, and everything else will take care of itself. It was only when Johnson started leaning on that offensive line in his play selection — that is, when he started giving the ball to D’Andre Swift and Boston Scott and started running the ball down the Vikings’ gullets — that the offense looked like the same dominant unit it had been in 2022.

The deviations from that made no sense. Aside from two deep connections with DeVonta Smith, Jalen Hurts struggled to see the field all night. And the Eagles were running the ball so well, the Vikings so powerless to stop them, that having Hurts drop back in the third and fourth quarters in attempts to stretch a double-digit lead only put that lead at risk. Amazon’s cameras captured a spat along the Eagles’ sideline with A.J. Brown at the center, and it seemed that a desire to get the ball to Brown led to three straight unproductive pass plays — a touchdown called back because of a penalty, an incompletion, and a Hurts sack — when pounding away with Swift, going with what was working, would have been sufficient.

» READ MORE: Eagles OC Brian Johnson gets booed but leans on D’Andre Swift and learns to run the damn ball

It’s possible, even likely, that the Eagles will shave away these rough edges as the season progresses. Johnson and defensive coordinator Sean Desai are new here in their respective roles. They have room to improve, and they might yet. In Foxborough last Sunday, Sirianni confessed that he would re-evaluate the Eagles’ hands-off approach to this preseason, their decision not to play their starters at all. And yes, perhaps it wouldn’t have been a bad idea to have those starters see some snaps, as much for Johnson’s and Desai’s sakes as for any of the Eagles’ most important players. Coaches need to get ready for the regular season, too, and that’s what these late-summer weeks of the NFL regular season have become in recent years. They’re ragged. They’re often ugly. They’re prep time that counts.

That’s the saving grace for the Eagles at the moment. They’ve been ragged, and they’ve been ugly, and they’re still unbeaten. They’ll take it. Everyone around here will. Just stop thinking everything is going to be as easy for them as last year. Different season. Different circumstances. Different feelings and fears after the same kinds of results.