The NFL is synonymous with Sunday. Any games on any other days feel wonky, but they happen. This is about those games and all of the weird stuff that comes with them.
The Philadelphia Eagles are scheduled to play on 10 Sundays between September 4th, 2025, and January 3rd, 2026. That leaves seven games to be played on Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. Some of those short weeks bleed into other weeks as well; it’s a lot.
The Eagles' schedule is back-loaded with short weeks
No matter which way you look at it, the Eagles have one of the toughest schedules of opponents in the NFL. Thankfully, some little quirks make it not that brutal from a logistical standpoint, for the most part.
Weeks 1 and 2: An immediate mini-bye
There are only two teams that get to play in the season opener: the team that won the Super Bowl and the chump that they get to drag along. This year, it’s the Eagles dragging the Cowboys.
There’s nothing really special about the schedule with this game because there’s no short-week travel or anything like that. Instead, it’s about what happens the week after that. In this case, it’s when the Eagles have to go to Kansas City.
In the past 15 seasons, the teams that play in the season opener have a 23-7 record in Week 2. It probably has something to do with one of the teams being really good, but it also probably has to do with the extra rest that the opening-day team gets. If it were that simple with the Eagles and the Chiefs, that would be great. Unfortunately, the Chiefs aren’t playing on Sunday in Week 1; they get to go to Sao Paulo, Brazil, and play on Friday night.
That means the Eagles won’t have the same mini-bye-type rest advantage as teams normally do over their Week 2 opponent. This time it’s only the one extra recovery day rather than the normal three days, but the Chiefs still do have a 12-hour flight home, and that’s not nothing.
Week 6: The great equalizer of TNF
In Week 6, the Eagles have their obligatory Thursday Night Football game. Games in short weeks are never great. Weird stuff happens, and it always seems like that ends up benefiting the worse team.
The Eagles are playing the Giants in Week 6. The Giants are the worst team. You have to imagine that the Eagles being so much better than the Giants is enough to outdo the natural counterweight of a Thursday game.
Week 7: The only opponent coming off a Bye
In Week 7, the Eagles are going to Minnesota. The Vikings are coming off their bye… after they wrap up their European tour. Playing a team coming off their bye is typically not something that you want. Luckily, the Eagles are coming off a mini-bye, which should neutralize the Vikings' rest advantage.
For what it’s worth, the Eagles have a 10-4 record with a rest disadvantage under Nick Sirianni, and the Vikings have a 6-5 record with a rest advantage under Kevin O’Connell.
This is more about the Eagles having a super difficult schedule opponents-wise, and it’s not being made any more difficult by the timing of the opponents. Two thumbs up.
Week 10: Monday night after the bye
The Eagles are coming off their bye week and then play on Monday night in Green Bay. That means the Packers don’t get a whole mini-bye week, but they do get an extra day of rest. That’s kind of a bummer. You’d rather reap all of the benefits of the bye — which I realize is entirely counterintuitive to what I just said about the situation with the Vikings game.
It’s cool that the Eagles don’t get burned by another team's full rest advantage, and it’s lame that the Eagles get burned by not getting a full rest advantage. As a fan, you’re allowed to be irrational, and no one can shame you for that.
Week 13: Black Friday shenanigans
The Eagles get the Bears in the NFL’s third-annual Black Friday game. There have been some really stupid things that have happened in the last two BF games: In 2023, Tua Tagovailoa threw a pick-six, and less than a minute later, the Jets’ Tim Boyle (remember him?) threw a 99-yard pick-six to the Dolphins going into halftime.
In 2024, the Raiders were down 19-17 to the Chiefs with 15 seconds left in the game. That was until third down, when Aiden O’Connell was smoked in the chest by the snap, and they turned the ball over.
It seems like the Bears do dumb things all the time, and they’ll probably be the ones that goof up, but it’s football, so who knows?
Weeks 14 and 15: There, and back again
We knew that the Eagles were going to have to go to Los Angeles to play the Chargers at some point this season, and it turns out that’s going to be in Week 14. It stinks any time the Eagles have to fly all the way across the country, but this game is going to be on Monday night and it’s after a Friday game, so hopefully the trip there doesn’t take away from the recovery time all that much.
The issue is that it’s a round trip, and the Eagles are going to have to fly back across the country on a short week to play Pete Carroll’s Raiders in Week 15. In his 14 seasons as the Seahawks' head coach, the Eagles never beat him.
It’s good that the Eagles aren’t going to be under the gun during an away game against the better team of the two, but it’s still not the best situation. It would be a lot cooler if the Week 14 game was on a Sunday.
This is late enough into the season where games might start to get flexed, and the Bengals play at the Bills that week. There’s a non-zero chance that game could get moved to Monday and make the Eagles' travel and recovery schedule a whole lot easier.
Week 16: Saturday in Washington (Landover, MD)
A Saturday standalone game is kind of cool as an idea, but it’s technically a short week, which means this will be the Eagles’ second short week in a row. This late into the season, it feels like every little bit of rest you can get is super important.
But hey, maybe the Eagles go to town on the Raiders in Week 15 and rest their starters for the whole second half. That’d be pretty cool too.