Sitting at 4-6 and still only two games behind the Washington Redskins in the NFC East, the Philadelphia Eagles are alive, on paper. On the field, however, they look about as dead as a team can look. Was there a worse performance by a team -- any team -- during the 2018 season than their embarrassing loss to the New Orleans Saints on Sunday?
Maybe the Eagles will turn it around, like most observers have been waiting for all season long. Or maybe they'll just continue to be a bad football team. My bet is on the latter.
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- Philadelphia Eagles 2019 draft picks
- Handing out 10 awards from the Eagles-Saints game
- Final observations: Saints 48, Eagles 7
- The Eagles' most embarrassing 15 losses (or ties) over the last 15 years
And so, perhaps it's time to start looking at the Birds' positioning in the draft order. Obviously, the draft order is determined by record first, and the first tie-breaker is strength of schedule, as in, the team with the worst strength of schedule picks first.
As such, there are two ways to look at the draft order. There's the wrong way, in which you only use opponents each team has played already (and not the full slate of games), or the right way, in which you use the each teams' full slate of opponents, even though they have yet to play the remainder of the schedule. The latter is the right way because it gives a better indication of what the eventual strength of schedule for each team will be.
Sixers fans are no doubt familiar with Tankathon.com, a website that tracks draft positioning. Well, they don't just cover the NBA. They cover the NFL too, and they correctly use the "full slate of games" method of looking at strength of schedule. Tankathon would be my recommendation going forward. Anyway, the 2019 NFL Draft would look like this if the season ended today:
- 49ers 2-8 (.506)
- Cardinals 2-8 (.531)
- Raiders 2-8 (.556)
- Jets 3-7 (.491)
- Giants 3-7 (.506)
- Bills 3-7 (.519)
- Buccaneers 3-7 (.538)
- Jaguars 3-7 (.541)
- Browns 3-6-1 (.556)
- Lions 4-6 (.506)
- Falcons 4-6 (.509)
- Eagles 4-6 (.528)
- Broncos 4-6 (.531)
- Packers 4-5-1 (.494)
- Colts 5-5 (.456)
- Dolphins 5-5 (.462)
- Raiders (via Cowboys) 5-5 (.481)
- Titans 5-5 (.488)
- Seahawks 5-5 (.500)
- Bengals 5-5 (.538)
So wait, you had to suffer through this garbage season and all you get out of it is the 12th overall pick? Yep, there are a lot of bad teams out there.
The Eagles are currently projected to have 10 picks in the 2019 NFL Draft.
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