Eagles vs Cowboys Week 3: History, player to watch, gut prediction
By Riley Donald
The Dallas Cowboys are headed into Monday Night Football of Week 3 against their biggest rival, the Philadelphia Eagles. This game contains hatred, tons of history, and, whether other teams and fans like it, a huge amount of TV ratings. The Cowboys and Eagles each need a win to get to 2-1 so I fully expect both teams to come out swinging.
In this new weekly outlook on each game, I want to provide a weekly combination of history, weather outlook, and game analysis as we head into the weekend. The first two sections will be some fun history on the teams along with what the weather is looking like.
The other two sections are more analytical as I dive into one “under the radar” player or scheme for each team and then cap it off with my gut prediction. Look forward to hearing your guys’ thoughts on this but let’s get into it!
Philadelphia Eagles vs Dallas Cowboys History
All-Time Records: 70-54 (3-1 postseason), both in favor of the Dallas Cowboys
NFC East Division Titles: Cowboys 20, Eagles 11
Most Recent Result: Cowboys 37, Eagles 17 on December 27, 2020
The Cowboys come into this matchup holding nearly an entire season’s worth of wins over the Eagles. While that points to a pretty sizable margin, neither team has won more than four consecutive games since the 2003 season. The team’s trade blows in the matchup quite often.
While some fans, including myself, don’t believe the blue jerseys are cursed or bad luck, this matchup is where that stigma began. Back in the 1980 NFC Championship, the Eagles forced the Cowboys to wear their navy-blue jerseys on the road which ended in a 20-7 defeat. This loss is where that curse was born for those that believe in it.
More recently, the Cowboys and Eagles have both been on a bit of a rollercoaster. Both have seen success such as the Cowboys’ multiple playoff wins and the Eagles topping that with a Super Bowl win. But the success hasn’t been sustained for each team as neither of them has been able to repeat as a division champion since 2004, 16 seasons ago.
It appears there is a high likelihood that the division winner comes from one of these two teams and this week is a gigantic early season matchup. In a division where wins against divisional opponents often are the deciding factor, the Cowboys and Eagles know an early victory sets up for a season of forcing the other to play catchup.