Excellence on the gridiron begins in the mind, A.J. Brown’s been reading.

“Y’all just caught me that time,” the stud Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver said after Sunday’s win over the Green Bay Packers in the NFC wild-card game, per Zach Gelb of Audacy. “I’m doing it every drive, regardless of if I score a touchdown or drop a pᴀss, somehow [I’ve got to] refocus.

“My teammates call it a recipe. [This is] the first time I heard y’all got it on camera, [but] it’s not the first game [I’ve brought it to].”

The wideout’s book-in-nose sideline exploits were broadcast during the fourth quarter of Sunday’s 22-10 victory over the Packers — a game in which Brown only amᴀssed 10 yards on one reception. 

Internet pundits and even the game’s broadcaster were quick to write off Brown’s perusal of the paperback — “He’s a little frustrated, obviously hasn’t seen too many [targets] today,” said Kevin Burkhardt — as a mere distraction from his limited action on the field. 

But that ᴀssessment misses the point of Brown’s book selection in its entirety. Much less the fact that the copy the Pro Bowl receiver was thumbing through wasn’t fresh off a library shelf. Anything but.

After returning to the sideline, Brown plopped down on the bench, reached for his book and opened directly to a page strewn with yellow highlights and blue underlines. 

The teammates seated around Brown didn’t bat an eye as he entered the tome “Inside Excellence” by Jim Murphy. 

There are circles that consider Murphy’s opus sacrosanct — the pinnacle of self-help, forward-thinking, course-correcting enlightenment. The book took six years to write and it’s currently the No. 1 best-seller on Amazon. Thanks, no doubt, in large part to Brown’s inadvertent advertising Sunday.

At its crux, “Inside Excellence” espouses the wisdom contained within the Serenity Prayer, an invocation that has been spread over the centuries by groups ranging from Alcoholics Anonymous to YWCA, in Hallmark Cards and Kurt Vonnegut novels: “Oh, God, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what can not be helped, and insight to know the one from the other.”

What cannot be helped?

There were, for Brown, the injuries — first to his hamstring and then to his knee, sidelining him for swaths of the regular season. 

The lack of targets he saw upon returning to the lineup — and continued to see, or not see, Sunday.   

The nearly disastrous concussion star quarterback Jalen Hurts worked through just in time to come back for the postseason.

As for what can be helped, there are the intangibles.

Heart and hustle were on full display in the wild-card game when, to use just one example, Brown laid a clinical block to free up teammate Dallas Goedert on a 24-yard touchdown pᴀss in the third quarter. 

There are a lot of stars in the NFL but far fewer champions, said seven-time Super Bowl winner Tom Brady, who was on the call with Burkhardt. That was the kind of block a champion makes.

Keep blocking like that, keep practicing that inner excellence, and Brown and company might just be championing down Broad Street this time next month.