Training camp and the preseason are a wrap, final cutdowns are closing in, and all that's left is that one last wait until the Eagles are finally underway again with opening night next Thursday.
Obviously, this Week 1 is a big one. The Birds will open up against the rival Cowboys at Lincoln Financial Field, and for fans, doing so with the satisfaction of raising a Super Bowl banner right in front of them.
Matchup-wise, Eagles-Cowboys is always a draw for the NFL, but this time around, it'll have the benefit of a quarterback duel that has seldom been seen in the past few years, as Jalen Hurts and Dak Prescott will both be ready to go.
Somewhat surprisingly, Hurts and Prescott have only faced off three times ever since Hurts became the Eagles' starting quarterback in late 2020.
Divisional opponents always play one another twice a year, but due to a mix of injuries or scenarios where either team was in a spot to rest their starters, the two franchise QBs have missed one another pretty often.
They shouldn't this time, though, with both the Eagles and the Cowboys ready to operate at mostly full strength out of the gate.
Here's a look back at the Eagles-Cowboys matchups from the past several years, along with the starting QBs for each of those games:
Game PHI Result PHI QB DAL QB
12/27/20 @DAL L, 37-17 Jalen Hurts Andy Dalton
9/27/21 @DAL L, 41-21 Jalen Hurts Dak Prescott
1/8/22 DAL L, 51-26 Gardner Minshew Dak Prescott
10/16/22 DAL W, 26-17 Jalen Hurts Cooper Rush
12/24/22 @DAL L, 40-34 Gardner Minshew Dak Prescott
11/5/23 DAL W, 28-23 Jalen Hurts Dak Prescott
12/10/23 @DAL L, 33-13 Jalen Hurts Dak Prescott
11/10/24 @DAL W, 34-6 Jalen Hurts Cooper Rush
12/29/24 DAL W, 41-7 Kenny Pickett Cooper Rush
9/4/24 DAL ??? Jalen Hurts Dak Prescott
Prescott is 2-1 against the Eagles when Hurts is playing. As you'll see in the above table, though, the first win in 2021 came well before that year's Eagles figured themselves out, and the second caught them mid-spiral in 2023.
Outside of that three-game sample, the Eagles and Cowboys have mostly been trading off starter vs backup QB matchups with each team in the midst of various points of success.
Then there was the last game in December, when Kenny Pickett and Tanner McKee both tore up the Cowboys. That's a satisfying tape to go back and watch.
Now we'll actually get to see a proper Hurts-Prescott IV in less than a couple of weeks' time.
A couple of other loose ends on the Eagles during the wait until Opening Night...
Paths that still cross
The Eagles made a trade with the Vikings on Sunday for QB Sam Howell, which also swapped a couple of draft picks in 2026 and 2027.
On the Eagles' end, it shored up their QB room just a bit to compensate for Tanner McKee's broken finger, while giving them the runway to move on from Dorian Thompson-Robinson and Kyle McCord, who were each very fringe roster cases.
On the Vikings' end, they got the clearance to go and upgrade their backup QB spot, signing former Eagles QB Carson Wentz soon after.
Now, it's been years, and Wentz and the Eagles are both fully moved on from one another, but there is a bit of irony in Wentz landing with the Vikings after they made a corresponding QB move with Philadelphia.
Back in 2016, when Wentz was the Eagles' clear future under center once upon a time, they still had Sam Bradford on the roster as the established veteran and a holdover from the Chip Kelly era. And late into that summer, neither GM Howie Roseman nor former coach Doug Pederson wanted to publicly commit to who the starter was going to be.
Then they ripped the Band-Aid off.
In early September, right before the start of the season, the Eagles traded Bradford to Minnesota for a first-round pick and a conditional fourth, which cleared the path for Wentz to play right away and wasted no time ushering in a new era.
We all know how it went at this point. It was really good, then it was passable, then it got really bad and all parties moved on.
The Eagles got better again with Jalen Hurts and Nick Sirianni, and won another Super Bowl. Wentz, after tearing his ACL, had to watch his team win the first one with Nick Foles instead, and then took a Jadeveon Clowney torpedo to the back of the head. He was never the same.
Now he's signing on to be a backup for the team that was once used to help put him in the driver's seat in Philadelphia.
Small world, the NFL. Tough one, too.
Ready to live with it
We'll wrap on a lingering observation from training camp, which came from the practice immediately following the Browns preseason game a week ago.
Defensive coordinator Vic Fangio didn't mince words about the cornerback situation opposite of Quinyon Mitchell, saying for the first time all camp that Cooper DeJean would start getting looks there, then he didn't hide where he felt things stood in the rotation through reps.
DeJean did slide outside, while Adoree' Jackson took the bulk of the first-team reps with Kelee Ringo, Mac McWilliams, and recent acquisition Jakorian Bennett mixing in down the depth chart. In the latter half of the practice, Ringo, who entered the summer with the expected edge to win the starting job, had slid all the way down to third-team reps.
It was a brutal look for Ringo, and in the bigger picture of the positional battle, showed that there was no clear-cut, obvious answer for CB2.
Adoree-Jackson-Eagles-Bengals-Preseason-Tackle-NFL.jpgBill Streicher/Imagn Images
Adoree' Jackson is the Eagles' projected CB2 now, but not exactly because he ran away with the competition.
Now that camp is over, Jackson appears to have won the job, but not because he ran away with it. It's more that Fangio and the Eagles seem prepared to live with whatever shortcomings he brings for the time being.
In theory, it's not the worst idea given the Eagles' current hand with the defensive backfield.
So long as Mitchell can lock up his side of the field and DeJean his assignment in the slot, Fangio is experienced enough as a coordinator to be able to draw up a scheme that diverts some extra help Jackson's way.
Ideal? No, and certainly not anywhere near as strong as the cornerback situation was a year ago with Darius Slay still there, but it can work.
Plus, you never know. Last year, the Eagles' linebacker spots were the defense's biggest question marks, then Zack Baun broke out into a star while Nakobe Dean and then Oren Burks rose to the occasion next to him.
It's tough to expect that again, but maybe someone steps up and surprises once the games do start counting.
There's still time for a trade, too, of course, but if and when, the Eagles seem ready to live with what they got.
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