Coming off 4-win season, Birds won’t see much prime time

The Eagles get a Monday night game at Dallas and a Thursday night showdown with the defending Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

That’s it for the primetime portion of their 2021 schedule, which was released Wednesday evening. Two national games is a pretty good haul for a 4-10-1 Eagles team accused of tanking in its 2020 regular season finale.

For rookie head coach Nick Sirianni, 11 games starting at 1 p.m., including the Sept. 12 opener at Atlanta, is a good thing.

The Eagles play two of their first three games on the road, opposing the San Francisco 49ers in Week 2 at Lincoln Financial Field before taking on the Cowboys in Week 3 on Monday at AT&T Stadium. The Eagles and Cowboys have played in prime time the past 14 seasons.

Outside the NFC East, the Eagles play just three playoff teams this season, the list composed of the Buccaneers, the Kansas City Chiefs and the New Orleans Saints. All of those are at the Linc.

The Eagles play three of their last four games at home, all against divisional teams. Two of those games are against the Washington Football Team, with the New York Giants and Cowboys the others. The Eagles entertain the Cowboys on Jan. 9 at the Linc to close out the regular season.

The first grudge match with the Giants, who assailed the Eagles for tanking and bit their collective lips when the Birds traded ahead of them to secure wide receiver DeVonta Smith, Nov. 28 at Met Life Stadium.

While the Giants made no bones about wanting to open the season against the Eagles, the NFL preferred to backload their schedules with division teams. The Eagles’ bye is the week of Dec. 12. The Birds will play Washington the following weekend, although it hasn’t been decided if that will be Saturday or Sunday.

The Eagles have the easiest schedule in the league this season, the aggregate record of their opponents from previous campaigns computing to a lowly win percentage of 43.0.

The Eagles play three games in September, five in October, four in November, three in December and two in January.

Eagles social media player reactions ranged from Lane Johnson’s “Let’s go!” to an emoticon wearing sunglasses and a smile from running back Miles Sanders. At least on paper, their team figures to be fighting an uphill battle at quarterback in eight of their first nine games.

That’s when the Eagles take on Matt Ryan, Jimmy Garoppolo, Dak Prescott, Patrick Mahomes, Tom Brady, Derek Carr, Justin Herbert and Jared Goff.

The Carolina Panthers, with Sam Darnold, won’t be an easy task as he may have as much cache at this point of his career as Jalen Hurts, the anticipated Eagles starting quarterback.

In the second half of the schedule, the Eagles battle a handful of teams in transition at quarterback, the list composed of the Saints with Taysom Hill, the Jets with Zach Wilson) and Ryan Fitzpatrick with the Washington Football Team.

Keep an eye on former Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz and the Indianapolis Colts, who open the season Sept. 12 against Russell Wilson and the Seattle Seahawks at Lucas Oil Stadium.