In February 2025, the Philadelphia Eagles defeated the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX. However, their title defense didn’t go according to plan, as they won just 11 games and lost in the Wild Card round to the San Francisco 49ers.
Now, after getting traded to the New England Patriots, A.J. Brown is opening up about what went wrong for Philadelphia.
A.J. Brown Explains Why the Eagles Lost Their Joy After Super Bowl Victory
Brown sat down with Maria Taylor in his first interview since the trade and gave the most honest account yet of the Eagles’ issues behind the scenes.
“I think the expectations that we placed upon ourselves became too much,” Brown said. “It’s like you have to understand this city. This city expects you to win every single year, and rightfully so. That’s what we work for.
“But the expectations that we drilled in our brain, it’s like we have to win, we have to win, we have to win. And you can become so overly focused and you start pressing. And I think this team just started to do that over a period of time.”
The Eagles went into the 2022-23 NFL season in a genuine flow state. They played freely, reached the Super Bowl in their first year with Brown, and lost to Kansas City. Two years later, they came back and won it all against those same Chiefs. The pressure that came with trying to repeat was too much for Philadelphia.
“The noise that came with it, because everybody’s expecting it, and you can try to deny it all you want to, we’re the defending champs,” Brown said. “And we said all year like, ‘We’re not defending nothing,’ but we are. We were.
“It was a conversation that we spoke about in the locker room, and we said what needed to be said in the media, but it didn’t go away because that was always the mission. Instead, I think the mission should have been just giving your all each and every day, let the chips fall where they may, because you can’t control the outcome.”
Brown took accountability for his own role in the noise. He acknowledged that some of his social-media activity during the season was wrong, admitting that he didn’t always handle specific posts “the best way.”
But inside the building, he stands by how he operated, including the tough conversations and the face-to-face accountability sessions that come with being voted team captain three consecutive seasons.
The Eagles will now move forward without Brown and with first-year offensive coordinator Sean Mannion now running the Jalen Hurts-led offense.
As for Brown, he joins the Patriots, who are fresh off of a Super Bowl berth of their own. He will serve as the No. 1 target for MVP runner-up Drake Maye. Last season, Brown caught 78 passes for 1,003 yards and 7 touchdowns.
According to PFSN’s NFL WR Impact metric, Brown ranked among the most impactful receivers in the league through his Eagles tenure. He was the third-best receiver in the league in 2024 and the fifth-best receiver in 2023. Last year, his WRi ranking dipped to 21st in the league, but he’ll try to bounce back with New England.
