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December 02, 2015

Looking at the Philadelphia Eagles draft position

Eagles NFL
120215JordanMatthews Jason DeCrow/AP

If the season ended today, the Eagles would pick 6th. Or 7th. Or 8th. Or 9th. It just depends on how you look at it.

With the Eagles sitting at 4-7, and a very good chance of being 4-8 after this Sunday's matchup against the Patriots in Foxboro, it's time to start looking around at the rest of the bad teams in the NFL who will serve as competition with the Eagles for draft position. 

Obviously, figuring out who has a worse record is the easy part. However, because the Eagles are one of seven teams with a 4-7 record, tiebreakers are likely to come into play when it's all said and done. In the draft, if two teams have the same record, the team that faced the easier strength of schedule picks first. If two teams have the same record and the same strength of schedule, it goes to a coin toss, which happens more than you'd think.

There are two different ways to calculate strength of schedule before the regular season has come to a close:

  1. The overwhelmingly popular (and wrong) way is to calculate each teams' strength of schedules up to the current week of the schedule.
  2. The correct way is to use the entirety of each teams' schedules, which provides a more accurate representation of what their strength of schedules will look like when the season is complete.

Unfortunately, the wrong way has the Eagles in a three-way coin toss tie for the 6th to 8th overall spots. The more accurate way has them drafting 9th overall, noted below:

Pick Team Wins Losses S.O.S. 
 1Titans 0.511 
 2Browns 0.517 
 3Cowboys 0.523 
 T-4 (coin toss)49ers 0.534 
 T-4 (coin toss)Chargers 0.534 
 6Dolphins 0.477 
 7Jaguars 0.489 
 8Ravens 0.494 
 9Eagles 0.511 
 10Rams 0.517 
 11Saints 0.523 
 12Lions 0.528 
 T-13 (coin toss)Giants 0.489 
 T-13 (coin toss)Buccaneers 0.489 
 15Raiders 0.506 
 16Bills 0.511 
 17Bears 0.528 
 18Jets 0.455 
 19Falcons 0.489 
 20Steelers 0.511 

If you prefer the wrong way better, here's how that looks:

Pick Team Wins Losses S.O.S. 
 1Titans 0.479 
 2Browns 0.504 
 3Chargers 0.496 
 4Cowboys 0.529 
 549ers 0.579 
 T-6 (coin toss)Eagles 0.463 
 T-6 (coin toss)Dolphins 0.463 
 T-6 (coin toss)Ravens 0.463 
 T-9 (coin toss)Jaguars 0.512 
 T-9 (coin toss)Saints 0.512 
 11Rams 0.529 
 12Lions 0.579 

We'll update this every week.

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