Eagles predictions for the 2024 NFL season: Division finish, playoff chances, number of wins and more

You could call this a ‘boom or bust’ year for the Philadelphia Eagles, but that doesn’t seem like it does the situation justice. This is more of a ‘get right or get lost’ season. Normally, if you think about a team ‘getting right’ you think about a team like the Arizona Cardinals from last year; a team that had a bad season from start to finish and is trying to have a record above .500 this year.

A ‘get right’ for the Eagles is different. Last year's collapse was historic; they were the first team to start a season 10-1 and fail to reach 12 wins. The offense had the potential to be a top-five offense in the NFL, but they ultimately failed. The defense shined at moments (the Dolphins game in Week 7 and the second half of the Chiefs game in Week 11) but after terrible coaching changes, they were a bottom-three defense by a whole boatload of metrics.

A ‘get right’ for the Eagles isn’t about being a sustainable team that can be competitive, it’s about being the winning team they have the talent to be. If they don’t get right, head coach Nick Sirianni is going to have to get lost.

The Rationale: an offensive and defensive overhaul

Losing Jason Kelce as the heart of the offense sucks, big time. It might even be the biggest single loss any team in the NFL sustained over the off-season. However, the offense has upgraded from last year with the additions of running back Saquon Barkley, wide receiver Jahan Dotson, and most importantly, offensive coordinator Kellen Moore. 

The brain trust of Nick Sirianni and Brian Johnson from 2023 is gone. It sounds like Sirianni has no say on the offense, which is a very good thing because everything on the 2023 offense looked labored. A Kellen Moore offense can make it look easy with scheme, freedom, and play design.

Defensively, it’s not hard to upgrade from last year. The decision to demote Sean Desai (or whatever they want to call it) and promote Matt Patricia to defensive coordinator IN DECEMBER was astonishingly and laughably ludicrous. Patricia should be banned from touching a football field, let alone calling defensive plays.

The new defensive coordinator Vic Fangio offers a defense with a markedly higher floor and a reasonably high ceiling. It’s definitely more complicated than what we’ve seen in the past and there might be a learning curve in the first handful of weeks, but by late October things should be in full swing.

Schedule prediction: There’s no G-word this season

The word “Gauntlet” should be retired after 2023 and that’s the last time it will be used here. There’s no prolonged stretch in this schedule where the Eagles have back-to-back-to-back (and on and on) grueling games. It’s actually quite the opposite.

Per Sharp Football Analysis, the Eagles have the 9th easiest schedule in the NFL based on Vegas' forecasted win totals. Per CBS Sports, the Eagles are in a three-way tie for the 10th easiest schedule based on their opponents’ 2023 winning percentage. @denizselman33  (on Twitter) might have the best way to do strength of schedule. Deniz bases it on “average opponent ranking by preseason Super Bowl odds” and that gives the Eagles the 6th easiest schedule.

The Eagles' schedule is pretty easy, no matter which way you spin it. On top of that, a few weird scheduling gaffes give the Birds even more of an advantage. 

After the Week 12 game in Los Angeles, the Eagles don’t have to get on a plane again. Weeks 13 through 18 are at Baltimore, home, home, at Washington, home, and home. That’s pretty awesome.

The other thing about this schedule is that they play the Cleveland Browns for the Browns’ third consecutive road game. Teams on the road only win that game 38.4% of the time. It’s a scheduling blunder that the NFL continually commits. It most recently happened to the Eagles in 2022 for the Week 16 (Christmas Eve/Garder Minshew) game in Dallas. 

That Cleveland game is in Week 6 which means the Eagles will also be coming off of their bye week in Week 5. Sirianni's Eagles are 7-1 when they have more than one week to prepare for a game. It’s just nice to be the one holding the gun sometimes. 

The difficult part of the schedule is the beginning and it’s not difficult because of the teams, it’s difficult because it will be an acclimation period. On top of the defense and Fangio’s scheme, it will be the first time Jalen Hurts calls protections and this offensive line plays together. That’s not exactly a recipe for immediate success. 

This prediction assumes that Nick Sirianni will take his new job as a CEO head coach in stride and that he’ll have nothing to do with the function of the offense or defense. It’s a bold assumption, but the guy is on thin ice so he doesn’t exactly have a choice.

The Eagles will have at least 11 wins this season, but a 13-4 record seems very doable. 

The swing games are Week 2 vs. Atlanta and Week 8 at Cincinnati. Those games are counted as wins here because, in Week 2, it’s the third straight year Kirk Cousins has to come to Philly on Monday night. He might be trying to shed the whole ‘Prime Time Kirk’ thing, but he won’t do that against the Eagles because he can't. This will be his third straight Week 2 loss at The Linc. 

The Week 8 win in Cincinnati can be due to a handful of things: The Bengals’ defense isn’t very good, they'll be coming off a physical loss to a divisional opponent in Cleveland, and the Eagles' offense and defense will be firing on all cylinders after what should be their most dominant win of the season (so far) over a divisional opponent in New York.

Regardless of whether they have an 11-6, a 12-5, or a 13-4 record, that should be good enough to take the NFC East. 

Division Prediction: The streak lives on

No one knows how magnets work. No one knows how big the universe is. No one knows why the ocean is blue. No one knows why there hasn’t been a repeat winner of the NFC East since the Eagles did it in 2004.

This weird streak of divisional lack of dominance will reach 20 years. The Dallas Cowboys won the division last year which means the football gods have deemed it impossible for them to win it this year. 

The Commanders and the Giants are going to have really, truly terrible seasons there might be seven wins between the two teams. A season where either of them is competitive for a division title means something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. Like, the football scene from The Dark Knight Rises kind of wrong.

As for Dallas? There has been nothing but bad vibes coming from them for the vast majority of the off-season. Jerry Jones’ incompetence as an owner/GM has hamstrung the team. Yes, they finally signed CeeDee Lamb to a monster contract, but Dak Prescott’s probably not getting a contract, they lost their defensive coordinator, and their big moves were bringing back Ezekiel Elliott and signing Dalvin Cook.

Even through all of that, they’ll still get 10 wins, and if they make it to the playoffs then they’ll just lose in the Wild Card round. That’s just what they do.

The Eagles will take the division with 11 wins, and then hopefully the unbreakable curse of the NFC East will break after year 20, but we’re not going to worry about that now.

Playoff prediction: Sirianni’s job depends on it

Nick Sirianni has made it to the playoffs every year of his tenure as the Eagles head coach and that seemed like it was a big selling point for him to keep his job after the 2023 season. The thing is, in two of those years, his teams were boat-raced by Tampa Bay in the Wild Card round. In 2021 the Eagles lost 31-15 (as the first ever seventh seed) and in 2023 they lost 32-9. Just terrible.

Nick’s gone if that happens again. The Eagles’ roster is built to win and Nick cannot afford to have them lose. Winning 11, 12, or 13 games would make the Eagles the No. 3 seed in the NFC and they would play a No. 6 seed which would be either the 10-7 Rams or the 10-7 Cowboys. 

A team from Los Angeles traveling across the country to play a January game in Philadelphia doesn’t sound like a winning formula and a playoff game game against the Cowboys is what the entire world wants.

It’s been five years since the Cowboys won a meaningful game in Philadelphia (they won in Week 18 of 2021, but the Eagles were resting starters). Mix that with the Cowboys’ ever-evolving way of losing playoff games hilariously, and this has the makings for an all-time moment in playoff history. The Eagles will make it to the divisional round where their season will end in Detroit.

Love him or hate him, Nick Sirianni is going to get right this season. The fallout of that means Kellen Moore will get a better job and we'll be right back here with Sirianni in a couple of years. Time is a flat circle of eternal suffering.