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Eagles Playing the Commanders Twice in Three Weeks to End the Season is Dumb
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Gotta agree with BLG on this one:
The first reason this is annoying is because at least one of these teams will be resting starters in Week 18. You’ve got a situation where the result simply doesn’t matter because someone already clinched, which means we’re deprived of a full-strength division rival game. It feels like this happens every other year with the Giants or the Cowboys and it happened in 2020 with the Commies as well, when the Birds tanked the finale to improve their draft position.
It’s additionally dumb considering that the Commanders and Eagles played the NFC Championship Game in 2025 and these Birds/Commies matchups were always going to be circled on this season’s calendar. Now we have to wait until Week 16 and then the second one might not matter.
The flipside, of course, is that there might be a situation where both teams are playing well and jockeying for position in December and January. If that’s the case, we could get a season finale for the NFC East crown (and a third playoff matchup?) but since the first regular-season game is only two weeks prior, it’s going to be somewhat redundant to play that matchup twice in 15 days.
It just takes some of the luster off what we all think is going to be the de facto NFC East rivalry moving forward, assuming the Giants stink and Cowboys underachieve like they always do.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com