It's been more than six months since the Eagles outlasted the Patriots in Super Bowl LII. On Thursday, the teams meet again ... in a mostly meaningless preseason game even though Philadelphia offensive lineman Lane Johnson, who has been critical about "The Patriot Way" since late last season, has made it to be something more than that.

"All the media wants to talk about is rings," Johnson said in May. "Rings. I'm going to get this ring and never wear it one day. I'm going to put it away in a box. The only thing you're going to remember from your playing days, you're not going to remember the scores. You're going to remember the people you played with and how you felt. And that's the truth. All these guys talking about 'I'll take the rings.' OK. You can have your rings. You can also have f------ 15 miserable years."

And Johnson fully expects Patriots fans to give him the business at Gillette Stadium on Thursday night.

"Oh yeah. I hope so," he said after practice Tuesday, via ESPN.com. "They can cuss me, they can say whatever they want. At the end of the day, I'm not blocking them, I'm blocking guys on the edge, so it really doesn't matter what they say. I know that I'm not going to be well-liked, this team is not going to be well-liked going there, so it's going to basically bring out our best."

Johnson had previously said Patriots owner Robert Kraft had trash-talked Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie before the Super Bowl.

"Here's what p----- me off," Johnson told Steve Austin during a podcast recorded this spring. "The Patriots, obviously, I respect their coach, I respect Bill [Belichick], I respect Tom Brady. But just because the way they won the Super Bowls -- the Patriot Way -- is that how everybody else is supposed to do the same thing? No, it's not. And that's what I got mad at, the arrogance by them. There was obviously some stuff behind closed doors. Their owner talking s--- to our owner. Bill talking s--- to our head coach (Doug Pederson) before the game. I'm not going to say it, but a lot of s--- kinda built up to that. And I just got tired of hearing about it, man, to be honest."

Johnson expanded on those thoughts this week.

"I just felt like we weren't even given a chance going into the game," he explained. "I felt like we were disrespected, and we were by them. I made plenty of comments about why I said what I said. It's not like I was coming out of the blue just to talk. It's because I felt like I've been disrespected and the team's been disrespected. It's not like I'm coming out here running my mouth because I want to. No other teams really came out and ran their mouth."

Johnson has a theory for why his remarks have struck a nerve.

"People can discredit it all they want," he said. "I think it's why I get so much recognition is because a lot of it is true and they don't want to accept it. At the end of the day, man, I'm over it ... It's a totally different year. I am excited to go play against a great team. Anytime you go against a great team, it's going to bring out the best in yourself and in them, and that's what we need, even if it's a preseason game, so Week 1 we don't have anything that surprises us."

Meanwhile, in Foxborough, coach Bill Belichick was asked if he had any thoughts on Johnson's criticism of the NFL's most successful franchise this century.

"We're focused on what we're doing," he said. "We need to have a good practice today and try to improve our team today. That's what we're going to do."