PHILADELPHIA — There was this aspect of DeVonta Smith’s touchdown catch in Super Bowl LIX — the 46-yard “dagger,” as Fox’s Kevin Burkhardt called it in the moment — that has stuck with me ever since. It was not the catch itself, terrific though it was. It was Smith’s immediate reaction to it.

The touchdown gave the Eagles a 34-point lead over the Kansas City Chiefs. It caused any lingering doubt about whether the Eagles would win the game to vanish. Yet Smith flipped the football to a nearby official casually, as if he were finishing a drill during training camp.

The gesture was open to a few interpretations. There was definitely a been-there-done-that quality to Smith’s muted celebration, and it was also fair to wonder whether there was an undertone of I could have and should have been doing more of that.

In the aftermath of a narrow victory over the Carolina Panthers last December, when an unproductive performance by Jalen Hurts led to some controversy, much of that controversy centered around A.J. Brown’s answer about the Eagles’ struggles on offense: “Passing.” But Smith was just as pointed in his comments that day, and the implications of that lapse in locker-room harmony are still relevant, ahead of Thursday night’s season opener against the Dallas Cowboys.

It’s no secret that the Eagles, by relying so heavily on Saquon Barkley and the run game after Week 5, turned their season around. It’s also no secret that, in doing so, they forced Brown and Smith to accept a reality that many wide receivers throughout NFL history have refused or at least been reluctant to accept: You’re probably not going to get the ball as much as you’d like.

The relevance of that development is obvious: Barkley had a remarkable season, and the Eagles’ opponents, like the Chiefs did in Super Bowl LIX, are likely to stack the line of scrimmage to stop him. Which, in turn, is likely to force Hurts to throw more frequently — and more frequently to Brown and Smith, assuming those defenses can stop or slow down Barkley.

Should any of this even matter? It would be nice for the Eagles to believe it didn’t. It would be nice to believe that Brown and Smith will be good soldiers again — that they’ll block on the outside and be content with whatever opportunities they get and that Smith will continue to be, really, the better soldier of the two. After all, he’s good enough to be the No. 1 wide receiver on three-quarters of the other teams in the league, but in the pecking order of Hurts’ weapons, he’s third. There are plenty of places where he could catch more passes for more yardage and more touchdowns. Not to play into stereotypes, but those kinds of things tend to matter to wide receivers.

“What the outside world does sometimes is factor in the person’s stats,” coach Nick Sirianni said. “I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in what everybody needs to do to help this football team win. When you get influenced by the outside world and what they think success is or what they think is impactful for that position, that’s my point — we need your contribution. I don’t need your contribution to have 27 catches in two games or whatever. I need your contribution to be this, and that’s a team. So that’s really important — that we don’t get caught up. Our job as the football team and as players and as coaches is to win every game.”

That’s easy for a coach to say, and it was hard enough for Sirianni to make sure that kerfuffle after the Carolina game didn’t ruin the Eagles’ season. It could have, but didn’t, and Smith deserves some credit for that, too. He wants the ball, and he doesn’t mind admitting that he wants the ball, but he has conditioned himself to see the bigger picture.

“It depends on who you are,” Smith said. “Everybody has different things. For me, yeah, I want to have a certain amount of catches, a certain amount of yards, things like that. But I think it’s the journey. You can’t get down on stuff like this. For me, I remember the journey, what it took to get here, what it took to take care of my family. You don’t let that upset you because at the end of the day, you take care of your family and do the things you need to do.

“There’s no need to get mad and take for granted the positive things. You’re still playing the game that you love. You’re still taking care of your family. It can always be worse. It can always be worse, you know?”

It sure could. It would be much worse, and it’s a safe bet that Smith would be much antsier, if the Eagles hadn’t signed him to a three-year, $75 million contract extension, with $51 million in guaranteed money, before last season.

“I wouldn’t say I needed the contract extension, but that gave me the clarification,” he said. “I’ve been in a lot of rooms and a lot of places where you have great guys around you, and the ball has to go around to everybody. So that helped me — being at Alabama with four first-round receivers, being in high school with guys who were very good guys.”

In other words: He has been there. He has done that. Because he has, the Eagles paid him. Because he has, he can handle his contribution, whatever it might be.

Sounds good. We’ll see. To be revisited. In, say, five weeks.

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