The Philadelphia Eagles will host the Dallas Cowboys in the 2025 NFL season opener. Philadelphia earned that honor by demolishing the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 in Super Bowl 59, and will be raising the championship banner in front of their arch-rivals.
The Cowboys will have to use that as their motivation on opening night, and one team insider echoed that thought in a recent tweet.
Eagles’ Banner Raising Must ‘Serve as Motivation’ for Cowboys Says Insider
To say Dallas needs a bounce-back season in 2025 is an understatement. Both sides of the ball struggled last season and were rarely at full strength. After losing Dak Prescott to a Week 9 hamstring injury, the offense was a shell of itself, finishing No. 23 in PFSN’s Offense+ metric.
Cooper Rush did admirably filling in for Prescott, but the unit showed its true colors against the Eagles and Washington Commanders to end the season. Ultimately, the Cowboys ranked 28th in passing success rate and 29th in EPA per dropback for the season, and weren’t much better with Prescott, finishing 27th and 22nd, respectively.
Dallas’ defense was also bitten by the injury bug with stars Micah Parsons, Trevon Diggs, and DaRon Bland all missing chunks of the season. The unit was No. 25 in PFSN’s Defense+ metric, finishing 16th in EPA per dropback and 31st in EPA per rush.
Parsons was still a stud, totaling 12 sacks despite missing four games with a high ankle sprain. However, Dallas’ All-Pro cornerback duo only played one game together. Bland missed the first 10 games after suffering a stress fracture in training camp, and Diggs missed the final six games due to knee surgery.
The Cowboys’ defense had been a top-five unit the three years before, so this was a huge fall-off in the team’s first year without Dan Quinn.
Winning any road divisional game is hard enough, but the extra caveat of Philadelphia raising the Super Bowl banner should motivate the Cowboys. Team insider RJ Ochoa took offense to the schedule news and made his feelings clear in a recent post on X.
It is particularly cruel to make the Cowboys be present when the Eagles will raise a Super Bowl banner.
But if this, and the behavior of Eagles fans in the fanfare of it all, doesn't serve as motivation for the Cowboys organization… nothing ever will. https://t.co/zQp1gLmVB9
— RJ Ochoa (@rjochoa)
Ochoa tweeted, “It is particularly cruel to make the Cowboys be present when the Eagles will raise a Super Bowl banner. But if this, and the behavior of Eagles fans in the fanfare of it all, doesn’t serve as motivation for the Cowboys organization… nothing ever will.”
His outrage over Dallas being chosen as the sacrificial lamb is somewhat overstated. The Cowboys routinely bring in some of the highest television ratings for the NFL. According to Front Office Sports, Dallas was tied for the third-highest average US viewership last season despite its 7-10 record.
The game will get plenty of eyeballs as the first game of the new season, but the league knows its ratings will be maximized with Dallas involved.
Ochoa’s second point holds water, though. Spoiling the party for the Eagles and their fans should be more than enough motivation for the Cowboys. They’ve been under fire this offseason for not extending Parsons and waiting until after the 2025 NFL Draft to make a big move. Nevertheless, walking into Philadelphia and beating the Super Bowl champions would be a nice way to start 2025.
