Philadelphia Eagles: Schedule is just setting us up for disappointment
The NFL released its 2020 schedule, but does anyone honestly think that the Philadelphia Eagles are going to play a full slate this year?
Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. That’s exactly the mentality that Philadelphia Eagles fans and football junkies across the country should be taking after the NFL released its highly-anticipated 2020 schedule on Thursday night. The league really had no choice but to forge ahead with a schedule that was as normal as possible. But, who are they kidding? Is it wise for any of us to expect that Week 1 will happen on time, all of the games will go off without a hitch, and we have uninterrupted football through Week 17 and into the playoffs?
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You can be optimistic, sure, but be ready for disappointment. And when I look at the Eagles’ schedule, there’s a lot of potential disappointment there in terms of things I believe we have a good chance of missing out on.
I’m like you; every year I get pretty excited and start circling key games and going through the possibilities in my head. I might even resort to the dummy move of going through the schedule wayyyyy too early and assigning wins and losses like some schmuck. By the way, 2020 is a WWWL LWWW LWWL LLWW for the Birds. But that’s beside the point, because you can’t like the odds of this thing happening uninterrupted from start to finish.
I will miss the feel of Week 1, which happens to be a repeat of last year, a home date with the Washington Redskins. It’s always a great feeling to start the year with a win over a division rival. And I’ll miss the prime time games that the Eagles are slated to have. For the last couple years I’ve been making sure to take off from work the next day (ahead of time, of course) so that I can fully enjoy these games in good company without having to worry about missing sleep or having a really rough day after it. You know what I mean.
I’ll miss the crisp autumn Sundays when the Eagles play a 1:00 game and get a victory out of the way early so that I can go about my day, instead of having to watch other teams I don’t care about as a buildup to the Birds’ game. This year, November 15 against the Giants and November 22 against the Browns was looking like a particularly appealing two-week stretch for this.
But one thing I see on the schedule that I’m definitely not going to miss is the Eagles’ October 11 game at the Pittsburgh Steelers. I should preface this by saying that my wife is a Steelers fan, so every four years we have to go through a battle. The last time it happened, in 2016, our son was a few months old and the game was literally for possession of his soul. Thankfully, the Eagles won that one. But it came in Philly, while this year’s match is in the Steel City. The home team always wins between them, so I’m resigning myself to a loss. To make matters worse, the game falls on the day between my wife’s birthday and mine. Thanks a lot, NFL.
I realize I’m throwing in a healthy (unhealthy?) dose of pessimism here, because there is still legitimate hope that the NFL season can happen the way we’ve just had it laid out for us. But will it be in empty stadiums? Or will the fans be allowed in, but somehow limited or restricted? It’s far too soon to tell, but that’s a major buzzkill. I don’t go to many football games because it’s exponentially better on television, but I do get charged up by seeing the passionate (drunk) fans who are in attendance lending the Birds an edge. What’s football without that?
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I guess, at this point, we should just be glad if we get a football season at all. We can’t be too picky at the moment. So, I’m going to try to stay excited about the Eagles’ slate of games this season. But I’m finding it hard not to curb my enthusiasm.