The Packers and the Lions lost on Sunday afternoon.
Then the Commanders lost on Sunday night.
Finally, the Cowboys lost on Monday night.
And even the Colts lost; as Leslie Anne Down said to Tommy Lee Jones in The Betsy, the Eagles and their fans don't just want to drive the car; they want the whole @#$%in' empire (and at the end of the movie, Jones got it).
The results of Week 9's games left the Eagles a half-game behind the Patriots, Colts, and Broncos in the race for the entire NFL's best record (and borrowing a term generally seen in America's former national pastime, even in the loss column), and ahead (on the conference-record tie-breaker) of the Bucs, Seahawks, and Rams for the top playoff seed in the NFC (Philly has also beaten both the Bucs and the Rams head-to-head).
About the only help the Eagles didn't get in Week 9 is that the Rams didn't lose to the Saints, who are no doubt angling for Arch Manning.
To add insult to injury, Philadelphia signed wide receiver Danny Gray, who outran DeSean Jackson at their respective combines (4.33 to Jackson's 4.35), on Monday to their practice squad, where he doesn't figure to remain for very long. Gray, a 2023 third-round draftee of San Francisco, played his college ball at SMU and hails from Ruston, Louisiana — the same town that gave the football world quarterback Bert Jones.
And so far as strength of schedule is concerned, Philadelphia is getting nowhere near the raw deal that they expected to be getting back in August: their first eight opponents were a combined 35-33-1; their nine remaining opponents, 38-36-2.
Furthermore, with an imposing three-game lead in the NFC East — the largest such lead in the NFL — the Eagles are threatening to become the first NFC East champion to repeat since they themselves won the division four years in a row, from 2001 through 2004.
Once — not if — Gray is promoted to the active roster, he will provide needed "blitz control" for quarterback Jalen Hurts, as Terry Bradshaw likes to say; and this figures to raise the team's rankings in both fewest sacks allowed (25th) and yards gained per completion (15th).
The rest of the way, the Eagles get to play two indoor teams in cold weather — the Lions at home on November 16 (and that's a Sunday night game too, which will make the kickoff-time temperature even colder — and dating all the way back to 1994, Detroit is 15-37-1 straight up and 21-30-2 against the spread in "Triple Witching Hour" games, which arise when a team that plays their home games in a domed stadium has to play outdoors, on natural grass, and at a cold-weather venue, all in the same game) and the Raiders at home on December 14 (Las Vegas is 7-24 straight up and 11-19-1 against the spread since 2012 as a visitor in cold weather); and Philly gets to play Washington twice in the last three weeks — and the Commanders will be very likely playing out the proverbial string when those two games are played (Washington is taking the biggest jump in strength of schedule from what every team played last season, using last season's records as a measuring rod; Philadelphia is taking the second biggest jump).
In 1992, the Cowboys were going to have the toughest schedule in the NFL based on the standings of 1991 — but as it turned out, they actually played the league's easiest schedule.
As one of the inmates in the 1977 movie Short Eyes put it, sometimes it just be's that way.
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