The NFL is breaking a two-decade streak between the Eagles and Cowboys

There’s one important thing missing from the 2024 Eagles schedule.

For the first time in more than two decades, the Eagles and Cowboys aren’t scheduled to face off in prime time. The last time that happened was way back in 2003, when John Madden was still in the booth and Cris Collinsworth was calling games on Fox alongside Joe Buck and Troy Aikman.

The Eagles’ Week 17 game against the Cowboys at Lincoln Financial Field on Dec. 29 will air on Fox, which will likely feature Tom Brady in the booth alongside Kevin Burkhardt, who grew up rooting for the Birds. But in another twist of the schedule, the Eagles’ first game against the Cowboys in Week 10 in Dallas on Nov. 10 will air on CBS, with Tony Romo calling his former team alongside Jim Nantz.

If you think Eagles-Cowboys on CBS seems weird, that’s because it is. It’s the first time the two teams have faced off on the network since 1993, when CBS still had the NFC package (Nantz actually called the network’s last Eagles-Cowboys game). It’s happening this season thanks to the league’s new TV deals, which guarantee CBS gets each NFC team at least once a season, meaning at least one highly rated Cowboys game.

“They’re only getting one bite of that Dallas apple, and it’s important to our friends at CBS to make sure it’s a good tasty bite,” Mike North, NFL vice president of broadcast planning, said during a league conference call.

There were several reasons that second Eagles-Cowboys game ended up where it did. For starters, the NFL tries to schedule as many divisional games as it can late in the season to make sure games are competitive as possible ahead of the playoffs. It’s also likely to be a big draw on that Sunday during a week when the NFL is stretched thin, with extra stand-alone games scheduled for Wednesday (two Christmas games on Netflix), and Saturday (a triple-header on the NFL Network).

“One of the things we really liked about this schedule was if there’s one thing you can count on in this league, it’s Cowboys-Eagles in Week 17,” North said.

Despite Eagles-Cowboys not airing in prime time, it’s likely to get a larger audience as a national game on CBS than if it aired on NBC’s Sunday Night Football or any other stand-alone package, NFL executive vice president Hans Schroeder said.

“The biggest-viewed window of our week is the 4:25 game,” Schroeder said, noting the focus was getting the game into a “big window” for maximum exposure.

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During the conference call, North revealed the Eagles weren’t too happy about parts of last year’s schedule due to what they viewed as an unfair lack of rest compared to other teams.

In NFL scheduling terms, it’s referred to as “total rest disparity,” and quantifies the difference in the amount of time each team had to rest before they played. For example, let’s say the Eagles and New York Giants are playing on Sunday. If the Eagles played the previous week on Monday night and the Giants played on Sunday, the Birds would have one less day of rest, so a rest disparity of minus 1.

For the 2023 season, the Eagles had a total rest disparity of minus 6.

“The Philadelphia Eagles were not thrilled with the negative rest they had for, I think, the gauntlet of Buffalo, San Francisco, and Dallas all coming right after Thanksgiving,” North noted, with both the 49ers and Cowboys playing on Thursday Night Football before facing the Eagles on normal rest.

The Eagles lost to the 49ers and Cowboys during their late-season collapse, in which they dropped five of their final six games before an early exit from the playoffs against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Their rematch against the Bucs comes in Week 4 this season, in what will be their third road game in four weeks to start their schedule (counting their “home” game in Brazil in Week 1 against the Green Bay Packers).

In putting together the schedule, North said he and his team avoid unfair scheduling decisions, such as placing teams on the road for four straight weeks or having them ping-pong across the country through multiple time zones. As for the impact of rest disparity, North said the data isn’t clear it affects competitive fairness. He pointed to the Kansas City Chiefs, who had a six-game span last season where they had less rest than their opponents, yet still finished first in the AFC West and went on to win the Super Bowl.

Maybe the Eagles’ complaints worked. This season, the Birds total rest disparity is plus 11, and they’ll play on less rest than their opponents just twice: Week 3 against the New Orleans Saints, and Week 18 against the Giants.

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