Can the Cowboys Crash the Eagles’ Super Bowl Party and Rewrite Philly’s Fate?

The Eagles and Cowboys step onto the 2025 NFL stage carrying the weight of wildly divergent past seasons—one riding the high of a Super Bowl triumph, the other wrestling with a decade-spanning title drought. Can Dallas shatter the spell and flip the script for their season opener, or is Philadelphia set to savor another moment in the spotlight? It’s a classic clash loaded with history, hope, and hard truths. While the Eagles are perched comfortably on a 9.7% chance to defend their crown, the Cowboys’ odds have shrunk to a sobering 0.8%, especially after sending star edge rusher Micah Parsons packing. But hey, numbers don’t play the game—people do. So as the kickoff looms, one can’t help but wonder: will this be the night the underdogs rewrite the narrative, or just another chapter in Dallas’s long quest? Either way, you’re gonna want to watch every second. LEARN MORE

The Eagles and Cowboys are coming off two very different seasons. Can Dallas flip the script to start the 2025 NFL season?

In what has become an NFL tradition, the defending Super Bowl champions will have one last opportunity to revel in their latest title before opening the new season at home in front of their fans.

And in what has become another annual occurrence, the Dallas Cowboys will once again open a season trying to end their championship drought.

When the 2025 NFL season kicks off on Thursday, it will have been 207 days since the 2024 season ended with the Philadelphia Eagles winning the Super Bowl with a 40-22 dismantling of the Kansas City Chiefs.

It will also have been 10,812 days since the Cowboys won their last Super Bowl title.

But who’s counting?

Well, we are at Opta Analyst. We count and track and chart all sorts of numbers and data.

And not only do we record all your basic stats like passing yards and interceptions returned for touchdowns, we also compute several advanced stats like burn yards per target and adjusted sack rate.

We can also take it a step further, with our supercomputer running simulations to calculate win-loss records, playoff projections and weekly NFL picks. So is this the year the Cowboys will end their championship drought and win their first Super Bowl since the 1995 season?

Our supercomputer says no. The all-knowing supercomputer gives the Cowboys a 1.3% chance of winning the Super Bowl.

Wait a minute. Sorry, Dallas fans, it’s actually 0.8%.

You see, our supercomputer is continuously making updates and modifications. It had computed Dallas’ Super Bowl title odds at 1.3% – and then last week’s Micah Parsons trade unfolded.

Following the trade of the elite edge rusher to the Green Bay Packers, the Cowboys’ projected win total on the season decreased from 8.0 to 7.1, their chances of making the playoffs plummeted from 34.4% to 21.1%, their odds of winning the NFC East fell from 16.0% to 5.7% and their chances of winning the Super Bowl dropped from 1.3% to 0.8%.

In fact, we have 22 teams with a higher probability of winning it all – including the Jacksonville Jaguars (6.9%), Chicago Bears (3.3%) and Atlanta Falcons (1.2%).

We give the Eagles a 9.7% chance of defending their Super Bowl title – the third-highest rate of any team behind only the Baltimore Ravens (11.4%) and Buffalo Bills (10.6%).

Yes, this has the makings of being a massive mismatch, but you should still watch for multiple reasons. For starters, you’ve been waiting seven months for the NFL to return, so if even if it was Indianapolis Colts against the New Orlean Saints, you’d be glued to your TV.

But as far as the actual game goes, we’ll take an in-depth look here at a few specific personnel formations and play concepts for when each team has the ball to give you an idea of how things could play out.

Can the Eagles Replicate the Offensive Success They Had in 2024?

The addition of Saquon Barkley last offseason may go down as the greatest free-agent signing in NFL history.

As you know by now, all Barkley did in his first season in Philadelphia was win the rushing title by becoming the ninth player in league history with a 2,000-yard rushing season, receive AP Offensive Player of the Year honors and help the Eagles capture the Super Bowl title.

They rolled to a 14-3 mark in the regular season, which coincidentally is an identical win-loss record to Philadelphia’s last 17 season openers dating back to 2008. No team has a better record in Week 1 in that span.

Barkley was the motor of Philly’s high-powered offense, which also returns its top skill position players from last year in quarterback Jalen Hurts, wide receivers A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith and Jahan Dotson, as well as tight end Dallas Goedert.

That grouping was on the field for a majority of the Eagles’ snaps last season.

Philadelphia used 113 personnel – that is, one running back, one tight end and three wide receivers – on 62.0% of their offensive plays in the regular season – slightly above the league average of 60.9%.

While Barkley pretty much found room to run whenever he touched the ball last season, he enjoyed his most success when the Eagles ran 113 personnel.

In the 2024 regular season, he averaged 5.81 rushing yards per carry – second only to Ravens star Derrick Henry’s average of 5.91, among qualifying running backs. When the Eagles ran out of 113 personnel, Barkley’s rush average jumped to 6.86 – the best in the NFL among the 41 running backs with a minimum of 50 such carries.

The Cowboys defense mostly struggled against teams that lined up in a 113 last season, as their opponents ran successful plays 42.0% of the time – the fourth-worst rate in the NFL – though it did manage to do a decent job of containing Barkley.

In last season’s two games against the Cowboys, Barkley ran out of 113 personnel 16 times, averaging 5.38 yards per carry.

On each one of those carries, the Cowboys were lined up in nickel, which was their primary defense for that specific offensive personnel in 2024. When teams came out of the huddle in a 113 formation, Dallas played in a nickel 90.7% of the time – the ninth-highest percentage of nickel used against 113 personnel last season.

And while the Cowboys did manage to keep Barkley from running completely wild – he “only” had five of his total 45 carries go for 10 or more yards – the Eagles were still able to move the ball down the field in a pair of emphatic wins.

In the first meeting in Week 10, Hurts passed for two touchdowns and ran for two scores while recording a 115.0 QB rating in a 34-6 road victory. Then in Week 17 with Hurts sidelined with a concussion, backup Kenny Pickett had a passing TD and running score and notched a career-best 119.6 passer rating as Barkley rushed for 167 yards to reach the 2,000-yard mark as Philadelphia clinched the NFC East in a 41-7 blowout.

Despite the Cowboys’ best efforts to bottle up Barkley, the Eagles still found success while in 113 personnel in last season’s two matchups, thanks to the arms of Hurts and Pickett.

The Eagles averaged 8.7 yards per pass play in 113 against the Cowboys, compared to an average of 6.4 yards per pass play with 113 personnel in their other 15 regular-season games.

Brown led the way in the first meeting, catching five passes for 109 yards, while Smith was Pickett’s top target in the second matchup, hauling in six balls for 120 yards with a pair of touchdown grabs.

So the Cowboys have to worry about pretty much everything on Thursday when the Eagles line up in 113 personnel, as the Eagles can either run with Barkley or put the ball in the air.

And Dallas now must try to stop Philadelphia’s multi-dimensional offense without the services of one of the league’s premier edge rushers in Parsons, who registered a pressure rate of 32.1% and an adjusted sack rate of 7.1% in last season’s two meetings. The two-time All-Pro had a pressure rate of 26.0% and adjusted sack rate of 5.4% in the other 11 games he played last season.

Can Dak Regain His Touch in the Pocket?

While the Eagles are coming off a season for the ages, Cowboys fans would like to forget all about 2024.

Coming off three straight 12-win seasons, Dallas sputtered to a 7-10 record a year ago. Dak Prescott missed the second half of 2024, including both matchups with Philadelphia, due to a torn hamstring, leaving Cooper Rush and eventually Trey Lance to run the Cowboys offense.

Mike McCarthy was fired at season’s end, leading to the promotion of offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer to head coach.

While it doesn’t take an NFL expert to recognize that Prescott is considered a better QB than Rush and Lance, the offense wasn’t exactly humming even when Prescott was healthy.

With Prescott throwing 11 touchdowns to eight interceptions (one fewer than he had in 2023, when he attempted 304 more passes), the Cowboys averaged 21.4 points in their first eight games while notching just three wins. In their final eight games, they averaged 19.9 points with Rush tallying 12 touchdown passes and five picks.

Although the offense struggled to score regardless of who lined up under center, the structure of Schottenheimer’s offense changed immensely with Prescott on the field compared to when Rush and Lance were. Through the first nine weeks, no team ran more plays with a QB drop back than the Dallas’ 162, with 67.8% of its pass plays being drop backs.

After Prescott’s injury, only 46.0% of the Cowboys’ pass plays were drop backs, with their 87 drop-back passes being the fifth fewest in the league from Week 10 through the end of the regular season. The drop-back passes, which played a part in the Cowboys’ success in 2023 when Prescott was the MVP runner-up, weren’t working last season.

He completed 59.3% of his passes while dropping back – just a bit better than the NFL average of 58.5 – and his pickable pass rate of 10.17% was second-worst among the 28 QBs with at least 40 drop backs in the first nine weeks of the 2024 season, ahead of only the Indianapolis Colts since-benched QB Anthony Richardson (12.24%)

For the Cowboys to find success this season and prove our supercomputer wrong, they need Prescott to regain his precision on drop-back passes – especially with an unproven ground game. He has a new weapon to go with four-time Pro Bowl receiver CeeDee Lamb in George Pickens, though the former Pittsburgh Steeler ranked 35th in burn percentage (53.5) and 38th in open percentage (61.4) out of the 41 receivers with at least 90 targets in 2024.

There are plenty of question marks with the Cowboys, and getting Prescott and the receiving corps clicking right out of the gate appears to be a tall order, given that the Eagles were one of the better teams defending when offenses dropped their quarterbacks back to pass in 2024.

Philadelphia limited opposing offenses to successful plays just 30.2% of the time when their QBs dropped back, with only the Houston Texans permitting a lower rate at 27.2%. And overall, the Eagles are projected to have the ninth-best defensive unit against the pass in 2025, per our preseason team ratings.

Opta Supercomputer’s Win Probability: Eagles 76.3%

This season’s Super Bowl is 157 days away, and though the odds are stacked against the Cowboys, no trophy will be awarded at Lincoln Financial Field on Thursday night so, regardless of the outcome, anything can transpire over the next five months.

Except for the Saints winning the Super Bowl – our supercomputer can’t fathom a scenario in which that happens.

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