The Eagles schedule looks about as good as can be expected. The opening quarter of the season features all the difficult matchups at home (Green Bay and the first meeting with McNabb and Washington), and very winnable road games (Detroit, Jacksonville, and San Francisco in Week 5). So if you’re thinking the young Eagles team will need time to rally under Kolb and for the jitters to get out, that’s as good an opening schedule as you could ask for. It’s not unreasonable for the Eagles to start 4-1.
They would probably have to start 4-1 to make the playoffs because the tail end of the schedule is brutal. At Dallas and at the Giants in weeks 14 and 15, then Minnesota at home and finishing the season once again with Dallas (which is looking like a new yearly tradition). So I can reasonably see an 8-4 Eagles team finishing 8-8 after that gauntlet in the last four weeks, or 6-10 if they don’t start so quickly.
There’s only one noticably difficult travel period going from Washington to San Francisco to Atlanta. They have a relatively late bye, week eight, which lets them prep for a home game against Indy in week nine. That might make an otherwise automatic loss into a winnable game. Andy Reid is usually very good in games after a bye. There’s also three Sunday night games, and a Thursday night and Monday night game each, so lots of chances to see Kolb and company.
Either way, I predict the talk about how it was a bad move to trade McNabb will be mostly silent until about week seven and then it’ll become louder and louder until the Eagles miss the playoffs and I’ll have to hear about it all offseason. I’m not looking forward to that.
I heard some speculation that TPTB were delaying the schedule until it was decided how long (if any) Big Ben’s suspension would be. What teams would the Steelers play when Big Ben is out.
The Pats have a really tough schedule, starting with 3 division games in the first 4, two of them away. The first four weeks are really going to set the tenor for the AFC East.
Then they get an early bye in Week 5. Blech.
They’ve got tough road games against the Chargers and Steelers (and of course Jets and Dolphins). At least the Colts, Ravens and Vikings are at home.
Aside from the Dolphins in the final week, the Pats late season cold weather advantage is neutralized with home games against the Packers and away games against the Bills and Bears, all teams that are used to dealing with bad weather. Jets at Pats on 12/6 is probably too early for weather to be a major factor.
4 night games (2 Monday and 2 Sunday) plus the Thanksgiving game against the Lions is pretty sweet, though.
ETA: NFL.com rates it as the 6th toughest schedule, based on last year’s standings.
All I said was that they were better than the Bears, which is objectively true. As a franchise, going back any amount of time up to around 40 years, the Giants are clearly better than the Bears by virtually any measure.
Doesn’t look like they eased the schedule too much if at all, but it is convenient that they get their bye week during week 5 so Ben has an extra week, assuming he has a 4 game suspension. Of course the Browns have to get them after that extra week of prep…
Then later in the season they get 10 days to prepare for the Browns again since the previous week is a Thursday night game.
Clearly the NFL understands that the Steelers need some help to face the mighty Browns.
Damn you, Oakminster – I was all set to respond to Ellis with something along the lines of “Cue someone calling out the '85 Bears”, but then I figured “Naaa…no one is going to fall back on pointing out that one time, 25 years ago, that they did something respectable”.
Oh yes, one thing that hasn’t been touched on here: the Steelers @ Saints game, the October 31st Sunday Night game.
Thank you, Commish – thank you very much for realizing that a regular season NFL game carries more weight than a World Series game. Thank you for getting rid of the ridiculous practice of not having a Sunday Night game that week. Fuck MLB.
I wonder if MLB will schedule the World Series around that Sunday? The Monday Night game on Nov 1 doesn’t have as much national interests with Houston against Indy.
Fox will already have a ratings feast on Sunday Oct 31 since they’ve got a probably Favre vs Brady matchup for the late Sunday game.
Yeah, as a Saints fan, playing on the road up North in December makes me nervous. Sometimes our guys have trouble hanging on to the ball if it’s cold…and snow makes it hard to pass…