There’s about one relevant NFL day in the month of April before the start of the draft, and that’s the release of the league’s schedule for each team. Now we all knew the Eagles’ 16 opponents since the end of the regular season, but on Thursday, the NFL officially released its complete schedule for the 2016 season.
Below I will list five takeaways for the start of the Doug Pederson era in Philadelphia.
1 – The NFL gave the Eagles a gift by scheduling their season opener against the Cleveland Browns, arguably the worst team in the league. Whether it’s Robert Griffin III, Jared Goff or Carson Wentz at quarterback, this is a game the Eagles should be able to win pretty easily. If they can’t, that just tells you what kind of debut season it’s going to be in the Pederson era. It’s worth mentioning that the last time the Eagles played Cleveland, it was also in Week 1. In 2012, Michael Vick threw four interceptions, but so did rookie Brandon Weeden, and the Eagles came away with a last-minute 17-16 victory. The Eagles play the Bears in week 2, meaning their first two games are pretty winnable, at least on paper.
2 – I hate the Eagles’ week 4 bye. Absolutely hate it. That’s the earliest possible bye week, and it means the Eagles will play 13 consecutive games without a rest to end the season. My preference is a week to rest right in the middle of the season, but the Eagles will have played just three games before they’re scheduled to take their week off. It’s also worth noting that the Eagles will face three consecutive teams coming off a bye: Vikings in week 7, Cowboys in week 8 and Giants in week 9. That’s unprecedented.
3 – Eagles have an unusual schedule in the sense that the beginning of their season is packed with road games, but the closing portion of their year is full of home games. They open the season with five road games in their first eight, including a tumultuous six-week stretch in which they play just a single game at home (four road games plus a bye week). But they end the season with three home divisional games in the season’s final quarter. Remember in 2006 when the Eagles became the first team in NFL history to play three straight divisional road games (and won them all)? This feels like basically the opposite. That could be huge in the unlikely event that the Eagles are competing for a postseason spot.
4 – Four prime-time games is more than I expected for a team coming off a losing record with a rookie head coach and a very mediocre starting quarterback. But the Eagles have always been one of the top teams in the league when it comes to ratings, so in 2016, they’ll play four times at night: once on Thursday, once on Sunday and twice on Monday. Their week 8 Sunday night clash with the Dallas Cowboys marks the 13th straight year the two teams meet on prime-time football. They play the Chicago Bears (week 2) and Green Bay Packers (week 12) on Monday Night Football, and they play the division rival New York Giants on Thursday Night Football in week 16. In all, they have four games during prime-time, two at 4:25 and 10 more at 1:00. This is a far cry from the Chip Kelly era when 25 of the 48 games weren’t at 1:00.
5 – On paper, the Eagles’ schedule looks tough, at least to me. Maybe that’s because I don’t think the Eagles are a very good football team. But in reality, they have the seventh-easiest schedule based off 2015 records. However, it’s worth noting that Dallas (4-12) and Baltimore (5-11) were two teams ravaged by injuries and will undoubtedly be much better in 2016. The Eagles have seven games against teams that reached the postseason in 2015 and four more against teams that reached the playoffs the year before. The most brutal three-game stretch for the Eagles comes from weeks 11 through 13, when the Eagles play Seattle on the road, Green Bay at home on Monday Night Football, and the Bengals on the road. That could easily be three straight losses.
