The wait is almost over. The long-awaited return of the NFC Champion Philadelphia Eagles is very much near and the fans cannot wait. The Eagles were so close to returning the Lombardi Trophy back to Philadelphia but came up just short in a valiant effort from Jalen Hurts and the Eagles. The Birds fell just short losing to Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs 38-35. Jalen Hurts has given the city of Philadelphia hope and no reason not to be excited and see them return after an eventful offseason. After a great draft class and very solid free agent signings, the Eagles are looking for their vengeance.
In the first game of the regular season on September 10, the Eagles will travel to Foxborough to face the New England Patriots. The Eagles open as betting favorites at a spread of 4.5 points over the Patriots. These two teams have a pretty strong history in the 2000s having faced each other twice in the Super Bowl with both teams taking one. This game has the Eagles favored over the Patriots due to the matchup advantages at most positions with the biggest being the quarterback. The Patriots quarterback will be Mac Jones who is coming off an average season and is not working with many weapons. On the other hand, the Eagles have MVP candidate and rising superstar Jalen Hurts who is widely considered a top three quarterback in the entire National Football League. The rest of the Philadelphia offense is loaded with talent from the offensive line with Lane Johnson, Jason Kelce, Jordan Mailata, and Landon Dickerson to the receiving core with AJ Brown and Devonta Smith and even the running back room arguably got better with more depth like native D’andre Swift and Rashad Penny. The New England offense only features names like JuJu Smith-Schuster and an aging Ezekiel Elliott. The defense for the Patriots is the strong suit of this team and has been for a very long time under long time great head coach, Bill Belichick. The Eagles are no slack in the defensive department either. They are one of the best defensive units with a defensive line that produced 70 sacks a season ago setting a franchise record and the secondary is led by star corner backs Darius Slay and James Bradberry. The Eagles also have two rookie studs in Jalen Carter and Nolan Smith from the 2023 NFL draft, they are loaded.
One of the big storylines coming into this game for New England is Patriots owner, Robert Kraft announcing that they will be honoring none other than Tom Brady before the game. The energy at Gillette Stadium will be very high so the crowd will be loud which could give a huge advantage to the Patriots. This will also cause the Eagles fanbase which is one of the most traveling fanbases in the NFL to be limited due to the meaning of this game for the Patriot faithful. Overall, this shouldn’t be a very close game. The final score should have the Eagles winning by decent margin but not many points scored in the game. A realistic score would be 27-17 with the Eagles coming out on top. This will be a good game to get the Eagles settled in to the season with many hard matchups awaiting them such as the Bills, Chiefs, Jets, Dolphins, 49ers, Giants, and Cowboys.
