The Eagles are 1-0. Takeaway #1 from Sunday’s New England win.

It wasn’t pretty, but neither was last year’s season opener in Detroit, and we all know what happened after that. Seven straight wins en route to an 8-0 start. Nick Sirianni didn’t have anything groundbreaking to say after the 25-20 victory, but did tell reporters he’ll reconsider his stance on playing starters in the preseason following a rusty outing in Foxborough:

Sirianni:

“I’ll definitely re-evaluate some of the preseason stuff next year. I know they (the starters) played the first two years we were here, they only played one series against the Jets in 2022, and maybe I should have played them a series or two this preseason and I already wrote that in my notes. I’m constantly self-evaluating. I’m not promising anything I know you all will remember this conversation and play it, and that’s okay. But I’ll re-evaluate that. Second thought, if I had to do it over again, yeah I would have played the starters one or two drives in the preseason.”

Would a preseason series or two make that much of a difference? Hard to know. There was a lot of sloppy football across the Week 1 NFL slate, so it definitely wasn’t the Eagles exclusively needing WD-40 to get going. Joe Burrow and Cincy looked like the Bad News Bears out there. Washington and Arizona set offensive football back a hundred years. And as I’m writing this post, Saquon Barkley just got clobbered for a Dallas defensive touchdown.

It’s impossible to say that X amount of preseason snaps will make you ready for Week 1, since readiness is an arbitrary and abstract concept to begin with. It’s hard to go to New England and beat Bill Belichick on the road, no matter who is playing quarterback for him. They got the job done, and now they come home to play Minnesota.