NEW ORLEANS 

The 2025 season is afoot and the Eagles already are in the lead.

When asked after Sunday's game if he had imagined he could win Super Bowl LIX in his first year with the Eagles, Saquon  Barkley said, "Why not?" Then he upped expectations, quickly turning his attention to Super Bowl LX in San Francisco next year and saying: "Why not start our dynasty?"

That’s the last thing other teams around the league want to hear, especially ones like the Giants and Jets, who aren’t even in the starting blocks. Neither of the two local squads has the one key ingredient that has made every champion for most of this century rise up: A winner at quarterback.

The Giants’ roster is bare of the position until free agency and the draft roll around, starting next month, and the Jets seem to have decided that they are going to rebuild without 41-year-old future Hall of Famer Aaron Rodgers. Reports of their imminent divorce circulated on Sunday just before the Eagles trounced Kansas City, 40-22, at the Caesars Superdome.

It’s really no mystery why the Giants and Jets have struggled so much to get to where Kansas City spent most of the past decade and where the Eagles have ascended for the second time in eight  seasons (along with a Super Bowl appearance in which they lost by three points to Kansas City two years ago).

“In order to win in this league, you need a quarterback,” Hall of Famer Michael Strahan, a former Giant and now an analyst for Fox, said a few days before this Super Bowl. “Look at the teams in this game, look at all the teams in the playoffs. You need a quarterback. The Giants have struggled in that department. That’s first and foremost.”

Strahan didn’t say it, but that obviously goes for the Jets, too.

“If you do that,” he said of finding someone to play that critical position at a high level, “anything is possible in this league. We won a Super Bowl and we finished the regular season 9-7. We sucked. But we got hot at the right time, and that’s what matters.”

Kansas City and Philadelphia certainly proved that quarterbacks don’t have to come right at the top of the draft. Patrick Mahomes had to wait until the 10th overall pick to hear his name called by Kansas City and then sat one full season before taking the field as a regular starter. All he’s done is play in five Super Bowls in those seven seasons since, winning three of them.

Jalen Hurts, the MVP of Sunday’s Super Bowl, was a second-round pick. Now he’s a Super Bowl champ.

"I've been able to use every experience and learn from it," Hurts said on the Fox broadcast with the confetti still falling on him. "The good, the bad, all of it. Using it as fuel to pursue my own greatness. I couldn't do any of these things without the guys around me."

That’s certainly true, but the Eagles couldn’t have done it without Hurts. He completed 17 of 22 passes for 221 yards and two touchdowns and rushed for 72 yards to break his own Super Bowl record for a quarterback (he ran for 70 two years ago). He scored one touchdown on the ground, too.

How long will it take for the New York teams to get to that point? It can happen quickly, as the Texans and Commanders have shown with breakneck turnarounds in recent years, sparked by finding stability and stardom at that one position.

But it might take some time. The Giants don’t have that with general manager Joe Schoen and  coach Brian Daboll pretty much entering a win-or-else season. The Jets have a little bit more grace with the direction they go as first-year general manager Darren Mougey and  coach Aaron Glenn take control of the organization.

Regardless of the direction they decide to go in during the upcoming months, they  already will be lagging behind the rest of the league. The Eagles clearly are the kings of the Giants’ division and the Jets are up against the Bills, Dolphins and Patriots, a team that disappointed in 2024 but seems to have that key ingredient.

Kansas City may not have won a third straight title, but it isn't going anywhere. And the Eagles? They already know what they want to do.

“Let’s run this [expletive] back,” coach Nick Sirianni said.

The Giants and Jets? They’re not running anywhere yet.