The Eagles generate a lot of resentment around the NFL. Here’s why.

Nobody likes the Eagles, and everybody cares. Starting to feel that way, isn’t it?

David Carr of the NFL Network believes Jalen Hurts should be benched. The 49ers’ Nick Bosa might agree. Bosa’s teammate Deebo Samuel and the Cowboys’ Micah Parsons have been teeing off on them. Emmanuel Acho — formerly an Eagles backup linebacker, now a take-generator for Fox Sports — said that they “got exposed” by the 49ers. So did Steve Young; he called them “pretenders.”

Roger Goodell may or may not want to ban the Tush Push/Brotherly Shove, and the Buffalo Bills’ Jordan Phillips may or may not want to ban Jason Kelce, whom Phillips considers a dirty player and a big mouth to boot. Nick Sirianni has been irritating people in and around the NFL for a while now, and Eagles fans were voted the most annoying in the league, per a poll last month by The Athletic.

Some of this chatter is simply the currency of the modern media economic system. Saying Hurts has to see the field a little better isn’t as outrageous as saying The Eagles would be better off with Marcus Mariota in the game and Hurts planted on a heated seat. And outrageousness inspires outrage, which inspires more outrageousness, which keeps the whole machine purring until, eventually, every sports pundit is standing on a street corner, wearing a sleeveless T-shirt and a sandwich board, and screaming, “Make no mistake: Zach Wilson is FILLED with the Holy Spirit!”

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But there are also a few less-profitable explanations for this apparent spike in Eagles hate, and one of them, maybe the biggest one, is the contrast between how the team is perceived locally and how it’s perceived nationally.

Here, the Eagles are like a member of a huge, loyal family: If you’re part of the clan, you have permission to criticize them. You can complain that they don’t run the ball enough or lament that they don’t value linebackers properly or beg them to fire all their coordinators. But woe to the outsider who says something similar. Them’s fightin’ words. Here, the Eagles are always battling for their deserved laurels from the rest of the country. They’re battling the whining 49ers and the overhyped Cowboys and any team from New York. They’re still the little guys compared with those franchises.

But to much of the sports-consuming public outside the Philadelphia region, the Eagles aren’t all German shepherd masks and holiday albums. Instead, they’re the team that, in Super Bowl LII, was smart enough and prepared enough to beat Tom Brady and Bill Belichick with a backup quarterback and a bold game plan. They’re the team that, since winning that championship, has returned to the Super Bowl, has reached the playoffs four times in five years, and at 10-2 still has the league’s best record this season. They’re the team that paid a king’s ransom to draft a prospective franchise QB, was forced to trade him, and sloughed off that major mistake in less than a year. They’re the team that has figured out how to sustain success in the modern NFL.

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When you view the Eagles through that prism, it’s no wonder that some resentment with them had been building or that people have piled on in the wake of the San Francisco loss. The Eagles long ago crossed the threshold separating a team that’s just happy to win from a team that’s expected to win. And when that kind of team loses — and loses by 23 points on its home field to another contender, with an important game against its top divisional foe next on its schedule — the reaction will be a mixture of surprise and exaggeration and honest analysis, and it will be widespread. Attention will be paid, especially since the Eagles themselves court at least some of that attention.

There is a sense, and not without merit, that the Eagles and their devotees tend to carry themselves like Jack Reacher strutting into a bar — and that they were due some comeuppance. Sirianni often gloats and puffs his chest when his team is winning or has won, and a lot of Eagles fans love that he does, because if they were coaching the team, they’d do it, too.

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There is, of course, just one way for the Eagles to fix this problem, if they even consider it a problem. They have to end their season on Sunday, Feb. 11, at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, with smiles on their faces and confetti in their hair. Until they do, if they do, they’re going to have to live with being targets and the backlash that comes with it. Underdogs? Nope. They’re the big dogs, lovable and plucky nowhere but in their own backyard.

The Eagles will visit the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday. Join Eagles beat reporters Olivia Reiner and EJ Smith as they dissect the hottest storylines surrounding the team on Gameday Central, live from AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.