The NFL is set to release the 2025 schedule in just about a month from today. That means it’s time to guess when and where the Philadelphia Eagles are going to play for their Super Bowl defending season.
We already know who they are going to play, and it’s going to be a doozy. But them's the breaks when you’re the best football team in the world. Here's how the schedule could shake out.
Predicting the Eagles' 2025 schedule
There won’t be a Week 2 game against Kirk Cousins this season
The NFL has a frustrating way of crafting its schedule. Every year, there are three or four teams that have to play three consecutive away games. Then there are situations like last year, where the Eagles didn’t have to get on a plane from Week 13 until they went to New Orleans for the Super Bowl. I didn’t try to predict any super unfair advantages like that for the upcoming schedule.
Week 1: vs. Los Angeles Rams
This is a tricky one because everyone wants the season opener to be against the Lions. I think it’ll be against the Rams, though. Part of that is rational, and part of it is just wishful thinking.
The NFL likes to start things off with a little bit of a bang. In 2024, the first game was the Ravens at the Chiefs. In 2023, it was the Lions at the Chiefs. In 2022, it was the Bills at the Rams. In 2021, it was the Cowboys at the Buccaneers. In 2020, it was the Texans at the Chiefs.
Over the last five years, the game that we knew would be the highest profile was last year when it was Lamar Jackson vs. Patrick Mahomes. An Eagles vs. Rams game wouldn’t be nearly as high profile as an Eagles vs. Lions game, but it’s certainly higher profile than an Eagles vs. Bears game.
As far as the wishful thinking part goes: I wouldn’t want to play the Lions right off the bat. They have a new offensive and defensive coordinator, and it’d be good to have some film on what kind of offense and defense these guys run.
We know what the Rams have, and this would be a fun rematch (kind of) of the divisional round of the 2024 NFL Playoffs. The Rams played the Eagles the best of any team in the postseason, so why not start the season off hot?
Week 2: at Green Bay Packers
The Eagles will continue their postseason rematches in Week 2. Similarly, it’ll be the second time they get to play a LaFleur brother (Mike is Rams OC, and Matt is Packers HC) in back-to-back weeks.
Listen, I like a snow game just as much as the next guy, and it would be cool if the Eagles went to Green Bay later in the season, but there’ll be other opportunities for those kinds of games.
When we’re talking about September football with a new offensive coordinator and a handful of new defensive starters, it’d be good to have the games against NFC contenders done with as even footing as possible.
Week 3: at Tampa Bay Buccaneers
The NFL loves sending the Eagles down to Tampa Bay early in the season. I don’t know what the players did to deserve that kind of curse, but it’s happened the past two seasons. Hopefully, this one is like in 2022 when they played on Monday Night, and not like last year when they played in the middle of the day.
Week 4: vs. Washington Commanders
This will be the last week of September football, so this is kind of where we’ll be seeing the Eagles getting into the full swing of things, and there’s no better way to end the first quarter of the season than by playing the most relevant team in the NFC East.
At this point, there will be some kind of injury on either team that will swing the game in one way or another. If it’s on the Commanders, their fans will say, ‘It doesn’t matter, X Player wasn’t there. It’ll be different later on.’ If it’s on the Eagles, they’ll say, ‘Actually, that guy isn’t that important. We’re the better team,’ and they’ll be talking about Jalen Hurts.
Week 5: vs. Detroit Lions
If I had to guess, this will be a Thursday night game, purely because at about this point, we’ve had three or four Thursday night games that have been terrible, and it’d be poetic to kick off October football with a marquee matchup, especially since this was the 'Game that never happened' in 2024.
Also, it always feels like there’s one of these conference games early on, and it affects the seeding in the playoffs way more than you’d expect.
Week 6: at Los Angeles Chargers
Going from playing a Dan Campbell-coached team to playing a Jim Harbaugh-coached team isn’t ideal, especially when you have to travel across the entire country to do it, but since the Eagles only have one trip to the West Coast, it’ll be nice to get it out of the way early. The tough part is that it is just the one game over there. That means it’ll be a long travel week rather than a situation where they can stay in California between games.
Week 7: at Dallas Cowboys
This will be the best chance for us to see a meaningful Cowboys vs. Eagles game, given that Dak Prescott doesn’t have some kind of debilitating injury early in the season again. Last season, that injury came in Week 9, the week before the Eagles went down to Dallas.
Hopefully, if they throw this game on the schedule earlier, Dallas’ 32-year-old quarterback won’t have the opportunity to get gangrene or whatever it’ll be this year.
Week 8: at New York Giants
In the past 10 years, the only time the Eagles haven’t had a season where they play back-to-back divisional games was in 2022. A lot of those games happen in the middle of the season. 2025 is going to be no different.
Week 9: Bye week
If I’m predicting a schedule, I’m going to throw the bye week in the middle of the season. I refuse to make it too early or too late. Call it a cop out if you want.
Week 10: vs. Chicago Bears
The Bears could be a little bit dangerous next season. Caleb Williams is going into his second season, and he has a head coach in Ben Johnson who’s shown he can be really creative.
Will that matter? Probably not. Nick Sirianni has only lost one game coming off of a bye week, and that was against Andy Reid in Super Bowl LVII.
Week 11: at Minnesota Vikings
This game is either going to be in Week 11 or in Week 2. In 2022 and 2023, the Eagles played the Vikings in Week 2, and then in 2024, they played the Falcons in Week 2. All three of those games were against Kirk Cousins, but seeing as how he’s not (currently) a quarterback on the Eagles schedule, it might not happen.
Regardless, this will be a pretty pivotal point in the Eagles' season. The Vikings have been a pretty good regular-season team for the past handful of years (that they’ve had a healthy quarterback), which means this will be the start of a difficult four game stretch.
Week 12: at Buffalo Bills
It would be really cool if this game was on Thanksgiving night. They haven’t played a game on Thanksgiving since 2015, when they lost to the Lions 45-14. The Bills, however, have played on Thanksgiving three times in the past six seasons.
There haven’t been many great Thanksgiving night games over the past couple of years, and this one would absolutely be a banger for everyone.
Week 13: vs. Denver Broncos
This game will be the biggest question mark on maybe the entire schedule. The Broncos made some good additions to their defense in free agency, and on paper, they look pretty nasty.
That being said, there’s always a team that looks good on paper in the offseason, and then it turns out that they’re going to stink up the joint. The Broncos are primed for that. This late in the season, we’ll have a pretty good idea of whether or not they will be real players or just another Broncos team that kind of just hangs around in the AFC West.
Week 14: at Kansas City Chiefs
This is once again one of those games the NFL would probably want to drop later in the season when there are a bunch of teams that are on the verge of, or have been eliminated from, playoff contention.
The Eagles and Chiefs no longer have a budding rivalry; it’s a straight-up, full-fledged rivalry. A game between the two teams that played in the Super Bowl doesn’t always happen, but when it does, the game gets a lot of eyes, and making that game a Sunday Night game late in the season would be a good move.
Week 15: vs. Dallas Cowboys
The sun rises and sets. It gets cold in the winter and hot in the summer. The Eagles and Cowboys play a meaningless late-season game. Those are the laws of nature. Week 15 is going to give us that game. It’s just nice that we’ll have the healthy Dak Prescott game out of the way already.
Week 16: at Washington Commanders
This will be the exact opposite of the previous week. The Eagles will have the opportunity to clinch the NFC East and break the 20-year curse of no repeat winners.
The Commanders will probably be on some kind of three or four-game winning streak and think that they’re on top of the world. Then they’ll realize the Eagles they saw in Week 4 are not the same team as the Eagles in Week 16.
Week 17: vs. Las Vegas Raiders
This will be the week of Christmas. The NFL is currently trying to take a stranglehold of the day by playing three games. If they want to do that, a good move would be to put Jalen Hurts on TV.
Unfortunately, Christmas is on a Thursday this year, so it’d be another game on a short week, and it’d be coming off of an important divisional game. For the team, that’s not prime. For people who don’t want to talk to their families, that’s excellent.
Week 18: vs. New York Giants
This prediction is based purely on trends. In the past 10 seasons, the Eagles have played the Giants in the final week. That includes the past three straight years. Sure, they could change it up, but I don’t really want that. It’s nice to have a cupcake or a game where the starters can rest going into the playoffs.
At this point (and maybe even by the first time they played in Week 8), the Giants will have fired Brian Daboll and Joe Schoen, and their franchise will have somehow found a way to lower the bar.